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Rev. Henry T. Cheever. 



IttMiral Cgdjatokrgo : 

ITS RELATION TO THE CURRENT 

Presbyterian Standards and the Basal 

Principles that must underlie 

Thpir Revision : 



BEING A REVIEW OF THE WRITINGS OF THE 
PRESBYTERIAN DIVINE, L. C. BAKER. 



BY 



HENRY THEODORE CHEEVER, D.D. 

Author of '''Correspondencies of Faith and Views of Madame 

Guyon" "The Pulpit and the Pew,"" "Island World of 

the Pacific,'''' "Life in the Sandwich Islands," 

"The Whale and his Captors," "Waymarks 

in the Moral War with Slavery,' 1 '' etc. 

Supplemented by an Original Thesis by 

Mr. Baker on the Eschatology of 

the Church of the Future. 



Whoso^hath faith in Christ shall be saved. God forbid that 
i should limit the time for acquiring this faith to the present 
life ! In the depths of Divine Mercy there may be opportunity to 
win it in the future state. 

Luther's Letter to Hansen Von Rechenberg, A. D. 1522. 



BOSTON 

LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

10 milk street 

1893 




L f 



Copyright, 1893, by Henry Theodore Cheever. 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



d 



<7 



TO 



THE GENERAL ASSEMBLIES, SYNODS, PRESBYTERIES, 

PROFESSORS, ELDERS, AND COMMUNICANTS OF 

THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 

OF NORTH AMERICA, 

THIS VOLUME 



£s CorUtallg Detncatett 



WITH THE HOPE THAT IT MAY HAVE A CANDID AND THOUGHTFUL 
PERUSAL BY THE CHURCH OF GOD 



I'M APT TO THINK THE MAN 
That could surround the sum of things, and spy 
The heart of God and secrets of His Empire, 
Would speak but love. With him the bright result 
Would change the hue of intermediate scenes, 
And Make One Thing of All Theology. 

Adopted by Chalmers. 



BRIEF SUMMARY OF CONTENTS. 



Dedication and Defense from Martin Luther and 
Coleridge — Introductory Statement and Raison d'Etre — 
Enthronement of the Christo- Central Missionary Theol- 
ogy — A Providential Opportunity for the Presbyterian 
Church — Neander's Word of Prophecy.— Pp. i-xiv. 

PART FIRST. 

A Glance at the Common Eschatology of Christendom— 
A Scriptural View of Last Things Suggested by L. C. 
Baker — The Ultima Thule of Legitimate Discovery in 
the Realm of Eschatology — Theology to be True 
must be Progressive — A Criticism from Lowell — 
Questions Proposed for Solution — Historical Sketch 
of the Movement for Revision in the Presbyterian 
Church — A Brief Abstract of the Author's Views of 
Resurrection — A Notable Debate in West Jersey 
Presbytery — Liberal Opinions of the Minority — Hon- 
est and Rational View of a Protesting Presbyter — 
Able Defense by Mr. Baker— The True Gospel of Res- 
urrection and the Pauline Scheme and Order thereof — 
View of Dr. Gordon's Ecce Venit. — Pp. 1-28. 



Vi CONTENTS. 

Current Eschatology of Christendom, 
section second. 

The Divinity of the Reformation injuriously called Cal- 
vinism — Not an Ism, but the Divinity of St. Paul and 
his Master — Resurrection a Recovery from the Death 
State — Teaching of the Old Testament as to Redemp- 
tive Resurrection — Royal Priesthood of* the Elect — 
Consensus of Theologians as to Old Testament — Oh, 
the Generations Old, over which no Church-bells 
Tolled — Mystery of Mysteries Viewed by Tayler Lewis 
— In Six Days of Creation — Power of a Right Principle 
— Dogma to be Interpreted by Light of Scripture, not 
Scripture by Light of Dogma-Observation of Gladstone 
that Popular Theologies must be Shaken down and 
re -adjusted to the Eternal Standard— Views of Bishop 
Butler, John Robinson and the Poet Longfellow — The 
Missionary versus the Mediaeval Theology — Conflict 
of Theologies in the American Board — The Holding 
of a Permissible Hope as to the Heathen — Not to be 
Made a Disqualification to Foreign Mission Service — 
Dr. Storrs' Presumptive Assent to Redemptive Resur- 
rection — Charitable Construction of his Diplomatic 
Language — Dr. Noah Porter on the Liberalizing of 
New England Theology by Modern Missions — The 
Same Modifying Influence at Work in Presbyterian 
Theology — The True Ground of Immortality not In- 
herent, but that in Christ all shall be made Alive — 
Weight of Scripture Testimony that Man as to Body 

I and Soul is Perishable — Failure in this Life not neces- 
sarily Final and Remediless — What follows a Correct 
View of Redemptive Resurrection — A Conquering 
Gospel for Missionaries of the Cross — Redemptive Res- 
urrection both in the Old Testament and the New — 
Tennyson's Lament that Agnostics should fail to find 
their Souls' Craving for Truth Satisfied by Christianity 



CONTENTS. Vll 

— How to Meet the Infidelity of Ingersoll — The Current 
Eschatology: How to be Clarified — Dogmas Proven to 
be Hindrances instead of Helps — How to Interpret 
Signs of the Times — Luther's Contempt for the 
u Grubbing Theologians" of his Day— The Key to 
God's Plan of Redemption — A Necessary Condition to 
Harmony with Science — Priestly Position of the 
Church toward the Human Race — The Revival of 
Faith a Sine Qua Non to Victory — A Gem from Hora- 
tius Bonar, Hymnist of the Millennium — An Instructive 
Brief of Personal Experience — Teaching How the Pur- 
pose of God to Redeem the Human Race is made De- 
pendent upon the Co-operation of the Church — Ex- 
pectant Nations Cry for the Message of Grace — The 
Question, not Can the Heathen be Saved without the 
Gospel ? — But can we be Saved if we do not Give the 
Gospel to the Heathen ?— Pp. 29-79. 



PART THE SECOND. 



The New Eschatology Explained. 

The Logical Basis of Revision and the New Theology — 
Dogma of Eternal Torment already Undermined — In- 
consistent with a True Knowledge of God — Runs 
Counter to the Primary Hope of Scripture — The Prin- 
ciple of Redemptive Resurrection Furnishes a Key to 
Right Understanding of all Scripture — Accounts for 
Certain Dominant Ideas in the General Faith of Man- 
kind—Accords with the Bible Teaching Concerning 
the Solidarity of the Race — Resurrection of Judgment 
not a Resurrection unto Judgment — Only one Form of 
Immortal Life Possible to Man and that in the Like- 
ness of Christ— The Dead Repeated in the Living— 
The Living Inclusive of the Dead.— Pp. 79-94. 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

New Eschatology Explained. 

section second. 

Questionings as to the How and When of the Resurrec- 
tion of Judgment — An Old Belief Giving Way to a 
Better Understanding of the Divine Wisdom and 
Goodness — Dr. Doerner's View that America will yet 
have a Theology of its Own in Advance of that of 
Europe — Three Predominant Modes of Thought in 
Christendom — The Eclectic Eschatology Combines in 
One the Chief Points of Excellence in the Three — 
What will be Saved and what will be Lost—The Innate 
Consciousness of God — The Hidden Mystery Shrouded 
— How to be Revived — The Sine Qua Non of Spiritual 
Progress — The Secret of Permanent Happiness — The 
Dual Nature of Man — How Mortal and Immortal — A 
Fundamental Fallacy — Endless Being and Endless 
Enmity with God Irreconcilable — Christ must Recon- 
cile all Things unto Himself and Become All in All — 
Difference between Remission of Sins and Remission 
of Penalty — The Bond of Dependence between the 
Living and the Dead — The First-born and Later-born 
Alike before God in the Matter of Final Salvation — 
Priestly Work of the Saints Carried into Eternity — The 
Version of the Gospel that will Win — A Mistake in 
the Location of Future Probation — No Ground for 
Future Hope except it be beyond Judgment — The 
First Chapter of Life Closed in Judgment — The 
Second Chapter to have its Own Experience and 
Issues — Ferment of Opinions in the Church Harm- 
less if Allowed to Expand — Dangerous if Confined 
— The Tree of Christianity Swelling in all its Buds 
— The Heresy of One Age the Orthodoxy of the 
Next — The Spirit and Work of Foreign Missions 
Swelling within the Heart of the Church — The Type 
of Eschatology to Convert the World with — The Goal 
toward which the Processes of Redemption are Work- 
ing — This Earth to be Peopled by Redeemed Humanity 



CONTENTS. IX 

— Emancipated from Sin and Death — Transformed 
into the Image of the Great Emancipator — The Phil- 
osophy of Man's Complex Nature — The Old Man and 
. the New Man — The Double Character marked by a 
Double Name — The Old Man Given over to Death 
that the New Man may be Raised up in Power — 
Spiritual Transformation by Natural Laws — The only 
Element in Man's Being that is Essential and Immor- 
tal — Salvation the Soul Transfused and Pervaded by 
the Spirit of God — The Crown of Immortality Won on 
the Arena of Earthly Life — Natural Basis of the Doc- 
trine of Resurrection — Spirits of the Dead Indestruc- 
tible while Continuity and Self- consciousness as Men 
may be Interrupted — The Flesh not only the Abode of 
a Dominant Soul, but it may be the Harbor in which 
Homeless Spirits of the Imperfect Dead Seek Shelter 
and Recovery — Room for the Prayer, Angels and 
Ministers of Grace Defend us — One Chain of Life 
Binds the Race Together, both the Living and Dead — 
A Mystery Involved in the Constitution of Man— Self - 
conquest and Sanctity of the Living Tend to Restore 
the Dead — Summary of Teaching as to the Nature and 
Method of Resurrection — Distinction between the 
Spirit of Life and the Conscious Being it Animates — 
A Testing by the Gospel the Privilege of All — Resur- 
rection of Judgment Equivalent to Re -incarnation — 
A Philosophy of Resurrection — Unsearchableness of 
the Ways of God — Derzhavin's Sublime Apostrophe to 
the Creator.— Pp. 79-141. 

PART THIRD. 

ESCHATOLOGY OF THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 
SECTION FIRST. 

Christ the Teacher as well as Exemplar of Resurrection 
— Evidence that Christ Tarried Awhile in the Psychic 
Realm after His Resurrection — From Resurrection to 



X CONTENTS. 

Ascension in the Form of Psychic Manhood— Thence- 
forth in the Purely Spiritual State until the Second 
Coming — In all Things Made Like unto His Brethren 
— The Source of Demoniacal Possession — Saving the 
Lost Through the Agency of an Elect Seed of Blessing. 
—Pp. 142-154. 

SECTION SECOND. 

Importance to the Church of a New Line of Evangeliz- 
ing Effort — Facts Concerning an Alleged Decline of 
Interest in the Church — Not Faith, but Theologic 
Forms, Losing Their Hold on Men — Effect upon the 
Ministry of such a Loss — Necessity of a Change of 
Base — How to Correct the Age-long Errors that have 
Crept into Theology — The Liberty of Prophesying 
not to be Fettered — Needed Corrective of the Holy 
Spirit — A New Departure in the Doctrines of Redemp- 
tion and Retribution — Exaggerations not Justified 
Either by Reason or Scripture — Enlarged Meaning 
Attached to Seed — Science a Help to Scripture Exe- 
gesis — Atonement not a Governmental Device, but 
the Expression of Infinite Love — Solemnity and Sub- 
limity of the Battle of Life — Harmony between the 
Laws of Life and the Methods of God in the Seen and 
Unseen World — Glorious Possibilities of the Future 
Through the Power of God in the Church — God's 
Light and Love Like the Latent Light and Heat in Oil — 
The Expression of Love in the Provision of Resurrec- 
tion — The Church Viewed as the First- Fruits— Conse- 
quent Responsibility to the Race — A Reasonable 
Lament and the Ground Thereof— Th3 Holy Spirit to 
be Honored by the Church as its Perpetual Guide— 
Intellectual and Spiritual Atrophy of a Manacled Pul- 
pit — The Common Traditional Mistake of the Apostate 
Church of Rome and the Reformed Churches— The 
Principle of Redemptive Resurrection cannot be 



CONTENTS. XI 

Safely Slurred— The Dead and the Living to be Viewed 
as under a Corporate Responsibility — Wherein lies 
the Power of Restoration and Recovery for the 
Human Race — Organic Connection between the two 
Wings of Humanity, the Dead and the Living — Cen- 
tral Positions that are Invulnerable— Absolute Iner- 
rancy of the Bible not one of Them— But the Holy 
Scriptures an Adequate and Trustworthy Revelation 
from God — Rev. Dr. Ecob on the Obligation of Pres- 
byterian Vows — A Defense of His Contention and of 
the Inherent Right of Reform.— Pp. 154-187. 

The Basis for a New Theology in a New 
eschatology. 

A Thesis by the Rev. L. C. Baker, Late Editor of Words 
of Reconciliation, Philadelphia — Broad Scriptural The- 
ology of Chalmers and Howard Crosby — God is love 
— The Three Alternatives before the Church of To- 
day as put by the Christian Union. — Pp. 190-224. 

Appendix. 

From the New York Evangelist of March 2, 1893. 

Plea for Peace and Work with Signatures of Two Hun- 
dred Ministers of the Presbyterian Church — A Creed 
that can be Preached— Neither Tridentine nor West- 
minster Confession Fulfills the Test — Strength of the 
Argument for Revision — Preaching, Methods of Work 
and Activity to Conform to the Confession, or the 
Confession Itself to be Altered to Suit the Changed 
Condition of Affairs — Another Way of Peace by Rev. 
Dr. J. H. Ecob— Can Two Classes of Minds, Conserva- 
tive and Progressive, Dwell Together in Peace ? — The 
Two Parties Need Each Other— Constitutional Recog- 
nition of Both Required— The Two Symbols therefore 
Revised and Unrevised to be Printed Side by Side — 
The One Brief, Scriptural, Irenic, Modern— The Other 
Historic, Dogmatic, Doctrinal, Theological, as it 
Stood from the Beginning.— Pp. 227-238. 



Let us exclaim with heroic Luther, Scandal and offence ? ! 
Talk not to me of scandal and offence. Need breaks through 
stone walls, and recks not of scandal. It is my duty to spare 
weak consciences as far as it may be done without hazard of 
my soul. Where not, I must take counsel for my soul, though 
half or the whole world should be scandalized thereby. 

Luther felt and preached and wrote and acted as beseemed 
a Luther to feel and utter and act. The truths which had 
been outraged he re-proclaimed in the spirit of outraged truth, 
at the behest of his conscience, and in the service of the God 
of truth. He did his duty, come good, come evil, and made 
no question on which side the preponderance would be. 

S. T. Coleridge. 



INTRODUCTION. 



To this somewhat unique volume no word of 
introduction is needed, other than its descriptive 
title-page. But a raison d'etre, if only reasonable, is 
always in place and always acceptable to the reader. 

It was the original remark of an acute philosopher 
and master of human thought, that truths, of all 
others the most awful and mysterious, and at the 
same time of universal interest, are too often con- 
sidered as so true that they lose all the power of 
truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, 
side by side with the most despised and exploded 
errors. 

Now I do not claim for our author the merit or 
glory of an original discoverer in the unknown realm 
of Eschatology. But we do assert that he has fairly 
lifted up out of the dormitory, and has brought into 
the clear white light of intelligent observation, an 
important principle that opens the grim portals of 
gloomy medisevalism, and puts the key into all the 
rusty locks of traditional theology. 

That principle is the neglected and misunderstood 
Gospel of Eedemptive Eesurrection. It is the prin- 



VI INTRODUCTION. 

ciple of an eternal benignant and redemptive plan 
and purpose and process in " The Resurrection of 
Judgment," " The Resurrection of the Unjust;" by 
which we can safely navigate the unexplored Ocean 
of Eschatology; ' Sounding on our dim and perilous 
way/ under the reign of law, and by the Nautical 
Almanac of Holy Scripture, until the Times of Res- 
titution of all things which God hath spoken by the 
mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began. 

It is a privilege and a boon, under the guiding 
hand of God, to have been only an humble pioneer 
in this direction. Let honor be to him to whom 
honor is due; and all the glory to the only wise God 
our Saviour. But it is not to be forgotten that 
saintly John Robinson of the Pilgrim Fathers 
" bewailed the fact that there were those in his day 
who followed, with no appeal beyond them, Luther 
and Calvin ; while he himself was confident that the 
Lord had more of truth and light to break forth out 
of His Holy Word." 

That truth and light are now signally breaking 
forth ; and who can doubt that they will still be break- 
ing forth, notwithstanding all that hinders, to the 
time of the end ? 

Not seldom do the spirits 
Of great events stride on before the events, 
And in to-day already walks to-morrow ! 



I cannot better express the present situation and 
juncture of the great Presbyterian Church of North 
America than by a reference to the old Greek of 



INTRODUCTION. Vll 

Posidonius, in the Dialogue between Traveller and 
the notable statue of Opportunity at Athens, by 
Phidias. The statue significantly says, standing in 
impressive majesty by the market-place : 

My name, I bear, throughout the world has flown; 
As Opportunity to mortals I am known. 

Traveller: And who is she behind so sad of mien ? 

Opportunity: Repentance is her name. Still is she seen 
To follow him, the wretch who weakly fails 
To seize me, when the timely hour avails 
Of noble action ! Thus she seems to teach, 
Be swift to seize the good within thy reach, 
Lest it be lost forever ! Ask no more ! 
E'en while I speak, away, away I soar ! 

The timely hour of visitation, yea, of noble action 
and Providential Reform, has come, in the order of 
Heayen, to the Ministry and Eldership of the great 
Presbyterian Church. We pray God that they may 
not ignore it, but be fully up to the pressing emer- 
gency and the Divine Call. So shall the ages bless 
them, and all the ends of the world shall 
remember and turn unto the Lord. 

In the present attempted formulation of a rational 
and Scriptural Eschatology for the Presbyterian 
Church, let there be a devout and self-forgetting en- 
thusiastic reliance upon the Holy Spirit. " Reason 
and Religion/' said Coleridge in his day, — and he 
might have added Theology too, — "are their own 
evidence. The natural sun is in this respect a sym- 
bol of the spiritual. Ere he is fully arisen, and while 



Vlll INTRODUCTION. 

his glories are still under veil, he calls up the breeze 
to chase away the usurping vapors of the night 
season, and thus converts the air itself into the min- 
ister of its own purification; not surely in proof or 
elucidation of the light from the heavens, but to 
prevent its interception." 

The interceptive mists of error, prejudice, and tra- 
dition that at this day becloud our spiritual heavens, 
must now be swept away into darkness by the living 
principles that are actualized by ideas, and that con- 
tain in themselves what Lord Bacon calls an endless 
power of semination. These great ideas, that shine 
with the brightness of the firmament in the Scrip- 
tures of the Old Testament and the New, are like 
the fixed stars, which appear of the same size to the 
naked as to the armed eye; and their magnitude the 
telescope seems rather to diminish than to increase. 
They shine, too, from age to age with the same steady 
lustre when once the clouds are off. 

But thanks be to God, the great Cloud-Compeller 
is now rending the firmament and rolling together 
the heavens as a scroll, that all flesh may see the glory 
of the Lord. And woe be to the man or the Church 
that would cover again the spiritual heavens with 
anything like the gloomy pall of the Dark Ages, or 
with the scanty modern mantle of poor, bloodless 
Agnosticism, sure of nothing, believing nothing,, 
doing nothing, and pitifully dazed and darkened in 
the eclipse of faith. 

Theology and Eschatology are twin sisters that 
should dwell together, never apart, in a mutual min- 



INTRODUCTION. IX 

istry, like Martha and Mary. As it is a poor and 
shallow Theology that makes light of sin and retribu- 
tion, or tries to explain away the stern and awful side 
of God's dealings with men, so is it a still shallower 
Eschatology that severs God's judgments from His 
love ; that divides the Almighty against Himself, and 
ignores the fundamental truth embodied in the rea- 
soning of the Psalmist : Lord, unto Thee belongeth 
mercy, for Thou renderest to every max ac- 
cording TO HIS WORKS. 

Xever should there be out of mind that essential 
article of faith in the Puritan creed of our Xew 
England Poet of Humanity and the Spirit, greatest 
and best of the Friends : * 

Still Thy love, O Christ arisen, 
Yearns to reach the souls in prison : 
Through all depths of sin and loss 
Drops the plummet of Thy cross : 
Never yet abyss was found 
Deeper than that cross could sound. 

* What Whittier insists on in all his lines is becoming the 
theology of the age: the supremacy of love and righteousness; 
self-sacrifice the law of life; humility the great virtue; social 
and political equality; the sacredness of the individual; ser- 
vice the universal and imperative duty; the redemption and 
perfection of society; absolute trust in God and consequent 
hope of immortality; the power and practicability of the pre- 
cepts of Christ, and especially of the passive virtues; in short, 
the Sermon on the Mount to be taken as it reads and turned 
into actual life. To these doctrines Whittier not only adhered, 
but he championed them in nearly every page of prose or 
poetry that he wrote. These are the things upon which we 
are fast coming into agreement as the substance of theology. 
I call Whittier a teacher of theology, not merely because he* 



X INTRODUCTION. 

The greatest, the deepest, the most comforting 
word in the Bible, says Dr. Philip Schaff in the 
Andover Review, is the word God is love: "And 
the greatest fact in the world's history is the mani- 
festation of that love in the person and the work of 
Christ. That word and this fact are the sum and 
substance of the Gospel, and the only solid founda- 
tion of Christian Theology. The sovereignty of God 
we hold in common with Jews and Mohammedans. 
The love of God is revealed only in the religion of 
Christ. It is the inmost essence of God and the key 
to all His work and ways. It is the central truth 
ivhich sheds light upon all other truths/' 

He might have added, the Gospel of Kedemptive 
Eesurrection through the dying and rising of 
Christ, which this volume heralds and vindicates but 
current Theology still ignores, gives the keynote for 
the all-conquering Missionary Theology of this last 
decade of the Nineteenth Century. 

This Evangelizing Missionary Theology is built 
upon the two fundamental principles and facts of 
Christianity, first, That God so loved the world, 
that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 



insists upon these things, but because by the greatness of his 
gift as an inspired poet, and by the wise and gracious temper 
of his spirit, he has wrought these things into the minds and 
hearts of his generation. He induces religious faith by his 
own example and experience. For he is himself so heavily 
charged with it that its virtue goes out from him into all his 
words.— T. T. Munger, D.D. : The Religious Influence of 
Whittier. 



INTRODUCTION. XI 

lasting life; and second, All that are in the gn-ves- 
shall hear His voice, and shall come forth by the 
power of Christ, to appear again befo- e God in the 
realm of the living. 

Preached "To Every Creature" by elect-mis- 
sionaries of the Cross baptized with the Holy Ghost 
and with fire, and free to declare to the heathen 
all the Counsel of God — this simple yet sublime 
Missionary Theology will ring the paean of victory 
to the ends of the earth that has been made ready 
so wonderfully for present subjection to Christ, 
through all this closing Century of Providential 
preparation. Poetry invokes it in the optimist strains 
of Tennyson : 

Ring out the old. ring in the new; 
Ring out the false, ring in the true- 
Ring out the want, the care, the sin; 
Ring in the Christ that is to win. 

Let every honest reader, especially let every loyal 
Presbyterian — nay, more, let every fervent follower of 
the risen reigning and coming Messiah triumphantly 
take it up, and pass it on with an ictus of enthu- 
siasm, until the sublime vision of the Evangelical 
Prophet be realized — 

One song employ all nations, and all cry, 

" Worthy the Lamb, for He was slain for us!" 

The dwellers in the vales and on the rocks 

Shout to each other, and the mountain-tops 

From distant mountains catch the flying joy; 

Till, nation after nation taught the strain, 

Earth rolls the rapturous hosanna round 1 



1X11 INTRODUCTION. 

To this swiftly coming issue, this longed-for con- 
summation, the great Presbyterian Church may now 
largely contribute, by her consecrated wealth and 
her sanctified sons and daughters. 

Be- vitalized by the in -dwelling Spirit, and her 
creed so harmoniously re-shapen and re-adjusted 
to the simple certainties of divine revelation, as to 
satisfy and hold in hearty loyalty all her present 
Presbyters, and to attract to herself a noble com- 
pany of enthusiastic applicants for the privilege of 
preaching the "glorious gospel of the blessed God" 
under her sheltering wing — she will go forth 
among the peoples from conquering to conquer. 

The Scriptures of truth interpreted by the Holy 
Spirit through the reverent studies of men of faith 
and prayer, her only inerrant guide : — her Escha- 
tology so revised and simplified as to embrace only 
the proven verities of reason and inspiration; 
her controversies composed; her Presbyters united; 
her heresy-hunting over; her missionaries in 
pagan and Moslem lands given the endowment of 
power from on high, and preaching everywhere the 
risen reigning, coming Christ, and the pending res- 
urrection, both of the just and of the unjust ; and 
great multitudes becoming obedient to the faith,* 



*I cannot agree with the conviction of those who 
think that this new creation of faith will be only a 
repetition of what took place in the 16th or 17th century, 
and that the whole dogmatic system, and the entire 
mode of contemplating divine and human things, must 



INTRODUCTION. Xlll 

in answer to prayer that, as the great preacher put 
it who has so lately passed into the Heavens, is not 
conquering God's reluctance, but taking hold of 
God's willingness. 

These are the conditions under which the Church 
of Augustine and Luther, of Calvin and Knox, of 
Chalmers and Guthrie and the Bonars in the Old 
World ; of Davies and Witherspoon and the Alex- 
anders Hodges and Barnes of the New World, — is 
to do its noble part in the near conquest of Human- 
ity for Christ. 

It is for the living successors at this day of such 
men to advance the Kingdom of Christ with an in- 
spired holy enthusiasm, on the providential lines 
of duty and devotion, by which the Master is so 
plainly leading : 

Till, Lo ! There breaks a yet more glorious day: 

The saints triumphant rise in bright array ; 

The King of Glory passes on His way ! 

From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest 

coast, 
Through gates of pearl streams in the countless host, 
Singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost ! 



return as it then existed. Well may the noble words of 
Luther be applied to those who cling to the old rotten 
posts of a scaffolding raised by human hands, as if they 
were needed for the divine building : When at a 
window, I have gazed on the stars of Heaven and the 
whole beautiful vault, and saw no pillars on which the 



XIV INTRODUCTION. 

Builder had set such a vault, yet the Heavens fell not 
in ; and that vault still stands firm. Now there are 
simple folk who look about for such pillars and would 
fain grasp and feel them. But since they cannot do 
this, they quake and tremble, as if the Heavens would 
certainly fall in ; and for no other reason than because 
they cannot grasp and see the pillars. If they could but 
lay hold of them, then the Heavens ( they think ) would 
stand firm enough. — Neander's History of the Planting 
and Training of the Christian Church, page 10, Vol. L 

Henry Theodore Cheever. 

Worcester, Mass., April, 1893. 



BIBLE ESCHATOLOGY: 

Its Belation to the Presbyterian Standards 

and the Basal Principles that must 

Underlie their Eeyision : 

in three parts. 
PART FIRST. 

Current Eschatology of Christendom. 



Man is a son of God on whom the devil has laid his 
liand, not a child of the devil whom God is trying to 
steal. — Phillips Brooks. 

To see a thing and to express the thing exactly as 
one sees it, is the greatest thing in the world. — Ruskin. 

Heresy is an error ; intolerance a sin ; persecution 
a crime. — Philip Schajps History of the Christian Church, 
Vol VII. page 693. 



THE CURRENT ESCHATOLOGY OF CHRIS- 
TENDOM: ITS RELATION TO THE IM- 
PENDING REVISION OF THE PRESBY- 
TERIAN STANDARDS, AND THE PRIN- 
CIPLES UNDERLYING THAT REVISION: 
BEING A REVIEW OF THE POSITION 
AND PRINCIPLES OF THE PRESBYTE- 
RIAN DIVINE AND AUTHOR, REV. LEWIS 
C. BAKER. 1 

There have been lately brought to light in that 
large and powerful Division of the Church in this 
country called Presbyterian, certain facts and ten- 
dencies of great pith and moment ; involving as they 
do the law of Christian freedom and progress, as 
well as the liberty of prophesying, and what John 
Bright termed the Right of Reform. They bear so 

1 The Mystery of Creation and of Man, with Appendix 
upon the Eschatology of the Future. By L. C. Baker. 
J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1886. Pages 232. 

The Fire of God's Anger, or Light from the Old Test- 
ament upon the New, concerning Future Punishment. By 
L. C. Baker; Philadelphia, 1887. Pages 290. 

Words of Reconciliation. Eight Volumes. A monthly 
magazine. L. C. Baker, editor and publisher, 2022 Delancey 
Place, Philadelphia. 



4 A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF LAST THINGS. 

strongly, moreover, upon certain vital points of doc- 
trine and eschatology which are now commanding 
general attention, that open discussion of them can 
no longer be stifled or evaded. 

In the State of New Jersey, an able, exemplary 
and tried Presbyter, a well-known and experienced 
author and editor, a citizen of no mean city, has in 
his own person innocently forced a question upon 
his peers, that must be met and gravely considered; 
not in the Presbyterian Church merely, but by 
Biblical Students and Theologians at large. A calm 
inquiry concerning it may lead to the conclusion 
that what to many minds is a novel view of resurrec- 
tion as Redemptive in purpose and effect, in char- 
acter and result, will be found to be the unifying 
principle of reconciliation between Counter Schools 
of Theology, if not the Ultima Thule of legitimate 
discovery in the obscure realm of Eschatology. 

The late debates in the General Assembly of the 
Presbyterian Church of 1891-92 which have issued 
in a veto, by a vote of seven to one, upon the ap- 
pointment of a learned Professor to a Chair in 
Biblical History in the Union Theological Seminary 
of New York, are but an exponent and proof of a 
profound movement that is going on throughout 
Christendom. Nor is it too much to say with refer- 
ence to that movement, that the doctrine of the 
Resurrection as related to the future of the human 
race, is the keystone in the arch of the Christian 
Faith, if not the key itself to the solemn problem of 
human destiny. 



A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF LAST THINGS. 5 

It was not a mere random remark of the lamented 
Professor, Dr. Henry B. Smith, but it was the de- 
liberate judgment of the wise Theologian himself 
not long before his death, " That what Eeformed 
Theology has to do is to Christologize Predestination 
and Decrees, Eegeneration and Sanctification, the 
Doctrine of the Church, and the whole of Escha- 

tology." 1 

Aiming as he ever did to deliver Philosophy 
and Christian thinking from Metaphysical bondage ; 
learned as he was in the history of opinions, and 
believing that Theology itself in order to be always 
correspondent to truth must be progressive, he might 
have added what Lowell so fitly set among other 



1 The positive views of Dr. Smith, a classmate of the writer, 
in regard to inspiration (and presumptively the views of his 
associates in the Union Theological Seminary) were given in 
his Discourse before the Synod of New York and New Jersey. 
Inspiration, he said, should be considered as plenary— that is, 
the divine influence which is its source extends to and per- 
vades the whole contents of the Scriptures, both historical 
and doctrinal. It extends even to the language — not in the 
mechanical sense that each word is dictated by the Holy 
Spirit, but in the sense that each writer spake in his own 
language according to the measure of his knowledge, acquired 
by personal experience, by the testimony of others, or by 
immediate divine revelation. They spoke as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost. And thus is the inspiration plenary, 
since the spirit works in all parts of the Scripture, and makes 
of the many one, of terrestrial dialects a celestial tongue, out 
of human and divine elements a divine work, God's book, 
given by men and for men. 



6 A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF LAST THINGS. 

suggestive and sparkling gems of criticism in the 
Poem of the Cathedral : — 

Each age must worship its own thought of God, 

More or less earthly, clarifying still 

With subsidence continuous of the dregs. 

Perhaps the deeper faith that is to come, 

Will see God rather in the strenuous doubt, 

Than in the creed held as an infant's hand 

Holds purposeless whatso is placed therein. 

Say it is drift, not progress, none the less, 

With the old sextant of the Fathers' creed, 

We shape our courses by new-risen stars, 

And still, lip-loyal to what once was truth, 

Smuggle new meanings under ancient names, 

Unconscious perverts op the Jesuit, Time ! 

"With these considerations in mind let us inquire, 
what are the salient facts and positions to be re- 
viewed and established in this Thesis as a basis of 
intelligent answer to the question, Is the general 
impending resurrection to be redemptive ? Or is it 
punitive ? Or can it be at once redemptive and 
corrective, while punitive and penal? Is or is not 
resurrection for all the human race, the assured re- 
sult of Christ's personal recovery from and victory 
over death, as the Head of humanity, the sinless 
second Adam, the Firstborn of the dead, the Beginner 
and Assurer of the Divine Order and Dispensation 
of Eternal Life? 

Is the resurrection of Christ the potential resurrec- 
tion of every son and daughter of Adam ? And is 
resurrection an essential part of the redemption that 
is in Christ Jesus, belonging to " the times of res- 
titution of all things, whereof God has spoken by 



A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF LAST THINGS. 7 

the mouth of His holy prophets which have been 
since the world began " ? Or is it a mere experi- 
mental annex to an eternal plan of redemption not 
yet perfected ? Is there to be reinvestiture with life, 
manhood and all its responsibilities to all that now 
abide in the mysterious realm of the dead ? 

Is living again in a body a law of Humanity and a 
boon for all mankind, through the redemption that 
is in Christ ? And finally, do Scripture and reason 
warrant the belief that such a personal resurrection 
for every member of the human family is a process 
essentially redemptive and benignant so that all the 
subjects of such "a resurrection of the dead, both 
of the just and unjust" (Acts 24:15), are naturally 
and of necessity still under the righteous and merci- 
ful government of God in Christ, prisoners of hope, 
not prisoners of despair ? 

On this question (in which the writer has con- 
ceived a profound interest by reason of long famili- 
arity and friendship with the author to be reviewed) 
it may be found that light is shed by certain facts 
and reasonings from the Word of God, through the 
mind of one of His servants, a laborious and devout 
student of Scripture, and a reverent inquirer after 
the truth as it is in Jesus; who, while giving to 
reason its high place, holds firmly to the plenary and 
supernatural inspiration of the Divine ATord, quite 
above the views of the so-called modern criticism; 
and to a doctrine of penal but not arbitrary retribu- 
tion in the nature of things, like the eternal law of 
gravitation. 



8 A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF LAST THINGS. 

About the middle of the year 1887/ Key. Lewis 0. 
Baker of Philadelphia, for many years a Minister of 
the Presbyterian Church, asked the Presbytery of 
West Jersey, with which he had been a long time 
connected, to advise him, first, as to the right, under 
the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church, of a 
minister who had become convinced that an error 
had crept into its system of Doctrine— 4he right of 
such a minister to agitate for its correction; and 
second, whether the discussion of the teachings of 
the Presbyterian Standards upon the question of 

1 Five years later than this date we find Dr. Henry M. Field 
of the New York Evangelist, innocently saying: "The move- 
ment for the revision of the Confession of Faith cannot be 
ascribed to any man; it was a logical necessity of the pro- 
gressive thought of the age. Those who were observing the 
signs of the times, saw that the spirit of investigation, which 
had been stimulated by the great discoveries in science, was 
turned to other departments of human inquiry, not excepting 
Religion, and that if it would hold its own against the scepti- 
cism of the day, it must give a reason for its faith. Our own 
professors and teachers saw that if the Presbyterian Church 
held stubbornly to antiquated forms of statement, involving 
doctrines no longer believed, it would drive away from it 
many of the rising generation, including some of its most 
thoughtful minds, who were earnestly seeking after the 
truth, and that those stumbling-blocks must be gotten out of 
the way. One of the first to recognize this was the late Dr. 
Van Dyke, who at once set himself with characteristic bold- 
ness to the gigantic task. Where he led the way, we are 
content to follow, more intent on the success of a cause which 
we devoutly believe is connected with the preservation of 
religious faith in this country than with the question, who 
shall receive the honor of the victory. " 



A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF LAST THINGS. 9 

endless punishment — which discussion had been car- 
ried on in " Words of Keconciliation," a Monthly- 
Magazine conducted by the inquirer — was so far 
outside of his duty and privilege, as a Presbyter of 
that Church, that he ought to withdraw from the 
Presbytery while engaged in such a discussion. 

To the first question it was answered : That it is 
his first duty to inform the Presbytery of the change 
in his views. He has a right to bring the subject 
before the Ecclesiastical Courts, in a constitutional 
manner. How long and how far he may continue 
the discussion is a difficult question, to be decided 
according to each man's conscience, remembering his 
Ordination vows, in which he both adopted the Con- 
fession of Faith as containing the system of Doctrine 
taught in the Holy Scriptures, and promised to be 
zealous and faithful in maintaining the truths of 
the Gospel and the purity and peace of the Church. 

The answer to the second question was deferred to 
the meeting of Presbytery at Atlantic City, N". J., on 
-the 25th of April, 1888. Meanwhile Mr. Baker made 
known his views to leading members of the Presby- 
tery, and followed their advice in calling attention to 
them privately. He also introduced an overture to 
the General Assembly, to appoint a Committee to in- 
quire into the propriety of revising the eschatological 
teachings of the Presbyterian Standards ; and offered 
publicly to receive advice as to his course from any 
Committee the Presbytery might choose to appoint. 

He was bound to seek the purity of the Church by 
calling its attention to certain confessedly wrong in- 



10 A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF LAST THINGS. 

terpretations of Scripture, by reason of which the* 
framers of the Presbyterian Confession had fastened 
on that Church a view of God's dealings with the 
majority of His creatures, so repulsive to her own 
present enlightened convictions, that she could not 
and dared not any longer set forth those mysteries of 
the future from her pulpits, in the faithful use of 
the terms therein prescribed. 

On the 25th of April, the Committe, appointed by 
the Presbytery of West Jersey, to advise with Mr. 
Baker, reported as follows : 

That they, hereby, renew the expression of high esteem for 
Rev. L. C. Baker, and confidence in his purity and in the 
sincerity of his convictions. Having held two meetings, and 
sought divine guidance; having listened to his oral and 
written statements, and each member of Committee having 
given his written opinion,— we do now concur in this auswer 
to the question, "Are the views which Mr. Baker has pub- 
lished from time to time in his Magazine called ' Words of 
Reconciliation/ irreconcilable with our system of Doctrine, 
insomuch that anyone holding them should withdraw from 
the Presbyterian Church ? " 

Answer : Mr. Baker admits an important divergence from 
the standards. He believes that the death and resurrection of 
Christ inure to the benefit of the unregenerate, especially the 
heathen, as well as to those who die in a state of regeneration, 
and that resurrection is redemptive in its effect. He says: 
This new resurrection life, however, with all its opportuni- 
ties, is conferred according to the harvest law which prevails 
in all God's realms of life, and which requires that men must 
reap as they sow, and to every seed its own body. 

Such a resurrection, graded in time and order, according to 
character, gives room for all that is required by the Scripture 
teaching concerning a " resurrection of judgment. " But it 



A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF LAST THINGS. 11 

makes room, also, for co rrective discipline and for the possible 
salvation of those who have not hopelessly hardened them- 
selves against the grace of the Gospel. Persistent, incorrigible 
sinners must incur the second death, which, without dogmatiz- 
ing, Mr. Baker is inclined to believe involves the ultimate 
extinction of all such lives as are hopelessly separated from 
God, the Creator and source of all life. 

By Mr. Baker's own admissions, these views are not in 
accordance with our standards. In our view, they are not 
sustained by the Scriptures. Instead of promoting unity, we 
fear that the continued agitation of his views will promote 
division and discord. We would not repress the liberty of 
honest investigations respecting the unseen spiritual world, 
so long as that investigation is conducted in harmony with, 
the teachings of Divine Revelation. 

We do not maintain the infallibility of every clause in the 
Confession and Catechisms, but we do not think the time has 
come to attempt a general revision, and not even upon this 
one topic, especially when we remember that the late reunion 
was effected upon the basis of these standards. 

If Mr. Baker could hold his peculiar views privately, with- 
out agitating the Church, we would be content to retain the 
same relation as heretofore, to one whom we sincerely love 
and honor for his piety and ability. But if, as he has in- 
timated to the Committee, he cannot cease from, a course of 
agitation, which must unsettle the faith of some and disturb 
the peace of the Church, we believe it would be more manly, 
more honorable and more consistent with his solemn Ordina- 
tion vows, first, to withdraw from the Ministry of the Presby- 
terian Church. 



When this Report came up for final action, it was 
adopted by a vote of fifty-five to five. On its an- 
nouncement Mr. Baker at once offered his resigna- 
tion 3 and the Moderator appointed a Committee of 



12 A SCRIPTURAL VIEW OF LAST THINGS. 

three to prepare a suitable letter of dismissal, to be 
approved by the Presbytery at another meeting. 

In the succeeding May number of Words of Rec- 
onciliation, Mr. Baker says, in substance, by way 
of review of the case, that he had testified to w T hat he 
believed to be essential truth. He held the Presby- 
terian Church to be in error at an important point. 
He had introduced an overture requesting the Gen- 
eral Assembly to provide for a re-examination of the 
Scripture grounds upon which the doctrine of endless 
punishment, now largely ignored among Presbyterians, 
was based. He had claimed the right to discuss be- 
fore the Church this issue, and to show from Scrip- 
ture the point at which it was apparent the framers 
of the Standards had erred. 

He had deemed it his duty to call the attention of 
the Church to what seemed to him its false position 
in holding tenaciously to certain doctrinal statements 
in its Standards — more properly opinions of leading 
theologians of that age — which had ceased to be a fair 
and honest expression of its views upon the points in- 
volved. It was necessary that he should show the 
.statements in question to be based upon a misappre- 
hension of Scripture, and that he should set forth 
the principle of interpretation which was overlooked, 
and around which, as he believed, the entire eschatol- 
ogy of the Eeformed Church must sooner or later be 
reconstructed. 

That principle is this, that while God cannot inter- 
fere with the operation of His eternal law that sin 
necessitates and must be followed by death — " Tho 



our author's views of resurrection. 13 

soul that sinneth, it shall die" (Ezekiel 18 : 4) — He has 
provided a way, out of the infinite resources of divine 
love and wisdom, by which, through and beyond 
death, He may give grace and succor to His creatures, 
now under the power of death, by a resurrection from 
the dead. 



BRIEF ABSTRACT OF OUR AUTHOR'S 
VIEWS OF RESURRECTION. 

That resurrection is not what is erroneously trans- 
lated in our version of John 5:29, " The resurrection 
of damnation; " thus apparently giving the authority 
of Christ to that formula of doctrine. For, this the 
Revised Version corrects, by substituting " Resur- 
rection of Judgement/ 5 — A resurrection of life and 
a resurrection of judgment. 

"The damnation of hell" to which our Lord ha& 
solemn reference, Matt. 23 : 33, in the pungent ques- 
tion to the Scribes and Pharisees, — " ye serpents, ye 
generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation 
of hell " ? — refers to the penalty or retribution entered 
upon by the ungodly at death. 

This damnation of hell spoken of with such inten- 
sity of warning by the Saviour, precedes, not suc- 
ceeds, resurrection. Such damnation may long retard 
resurrection, but whenever resurrection in the order 
of God reaches the man or the race, it is in the nature 
of a recovery, a restoration, a benefit. It cannot at 
once introduce a sinning man to the possession of 
eternal life, but only to new conditions of judgment 



14 ouk author's views of resurrection. 

and trial for life, and those graded according to char- 
acter. 

But resurrection as a part of the plan of God, and 
by the very nature of things, cannot be considered as 
a curse or consignment to eternal death; for it is the 
very opposite of that death * which is affirmed in 
Scripture to be the wages of sin and the destruction 
of soul and body in hell : whereas Resurrection is re- 

*In the eighth volume of " Words of Reconciliation," page 
339, we find the statement that there is a way whereby the 
chief systems of religious thought concerning retribution may 
unite in a common Eschatology that is at once reasonable, 
scriptural and scientific. Each of these systems can readily 
quote Scripture texts in its support. The orthodox point with 
solemn finger to the declarations of our Lord concerning a 
hell of quenchless fire and a punishment that is eternal. The 
Conditionalist quoles still more abundantly from the constant 
words of Scripture that the end of the wicked is destruction — 
a destruction that seems to be defined by all the equivalents of 
death to be an actual extinction of being. 

The Universalist with equal confidence affirms from Scrip- 
ture that God has provided salvation for all men through a 
propitiation which avails for the sin of the w 7 hole world ; that 
all generations, living and dead, are to be blessed by it ; and 
that the same Divine Love which stooped to the cross, and 
from the lips of the suffering Christ prayed for His murderers, 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," will 
find some way of restoriug even the vilest outcast and far- 
thest prodigal to the purity and bliss of the Father's house. 

Now what is needed is a system that refuses to build upon 
any one phase of Scripture teaching on this grave subject, and 
alike refuses to reject any absolute truth contained in either; 
but w T hich insists on combining all in one eclectic system that 
shall be true to all we can know of the character of God and 
of the nature and destiny of man. 



OUR author's views of resurrectiox. 15 

construction and re-endowment with life and account- 
ability to the Giver of life — a redemptive resurrection 
of judgment, of trial, of separation, of sorting. 

It is not for us to speculate unwarrantably upon the 
solemn mystery of death, or to discourse lightly of 
the under-world to which death is the portal, and of 
the hidden secrets and sequences in the realm of the 
departed. But speak we may and must with hopeful 
and well-warranted confidence of the pending resur- 
rection from out of that world, convinced as we are 
that it is no other than a natural and necessary period 
or stage of progress in the on-going history and de- 
welopment of Humanity, 

" Under the will and arbitration wise " 

•of the supreme All Father with whom are the issues 
of life and death. 

Is it not instructive and significant that the only 
definition of Eternal life by the Lord of Life himself 
is, " This is life eternal, that they might know thee 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast 
sent " ? (John 17 : 3.) Must not the converse be 
true : " This is death eternal, not to know thee the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast 
sent " ? 

Thus eternal life is made by the highest of all au- 
thorities to stand in the true knowledge of God and 
Christ, (of which knowledge love is the essence,) while 
eternal death is made to stand in unacquaintance and 
inharmony with God and Christ by reason of the ab- 
sence of love. 

" He that loveth not, knoweth not God " (1 John 



16 NARRATIVE RESUMED. 

4 : 8.) The witness is, this " that God gave unto us 
eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath 
the Son hath the Life ; he that hath not the Son of 
God hath not the Life." (1 John 5 : 11.) " He that 
believeth on me hath eternal life." (John 6:47.) 
" The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, 
our Lord." (Kom. 6 : 23.) " Join thyself with the 
Eternal, and thou thyself shalt be eternal." (Augus- 
tine). 

It has been virtually said by some one, that im- 
mortal life is the gift or endowment of God's power 
in first creating us; Eternal life is the gift of His 
love in new-creating us in Christ Jesus. Endless 
life is simply endless being. But Eternal Life in the 
Scripture sense is both endless being and eternal 
well-being in the knowledge and love of God; and to 
have eternal life is not merely to exist always, but it 
is to be having increasing knowledge of God and 
likeness to Him and communion with Him for ever 
and ever. 

NARRATIVE EESUMED. 

Ik his right as a Presbyter and as an advocate of 
reform Mr. Baker addressed the Presbytery in a 
lengthened argument extensively published with com- 
ments in The Presbyterian, of Philadelphia, The 
Evangelist, of New York, The Herald and Presbyter, 
of Cincinnati, and in other Presbyterian Journals; 
together with elaborate defenses of the Presbytery's 
action in recommending Mr. Baker's withdrawal from 
the Ministry of the Presbyterian Church. 



NARRATIVE RESUMED. 17 

One of these defenses says Mr. Baker's view is 
that the Church is above the Confession ; that it is 
not organized by the Confession, because, that 
would make it a mere voluntary society ; but that 
it is a divine institution realizing in history the 
Scripture idea of the body of Christ, and hence 
growing in knowledge through the in-dwelling 
Spirit. To this Church, he avers, one's loyalty 
may be perfect, although he may not be in full 
agreement with the human statements of its Con- 
fession ; and that this loyalty to the Church ought 
to secure to him a permanent place among the 
teachers of the church — his gifts, attainments and 
piety being unquestioned — even though he may 
feel bound in conscience to antagonize its Stand- 
ards. 

Is this theory of the Church, asks the Eeview, 
correct? " We have only to say, if it is correct, 
every historic Church in Christendom is in error. 
Every Church in Christendom has a creed ; and in 
theory, at least, the teaching of the Church assents 
to and is bound by it. Indeed, a spiritual body 
like the Church is unthinkable, without a creed, 
and without one which binds its authorized in- 
structors ; and hence, pushed to its logical con- 
clusion, if a presbytery were to recognize Mr. 
Baker's theory, it could not consistently ask a man 
to retire from its ministry, even though he denied 
THE SCEIPTUEES as the rule of faith, or the 
Trinity in Unity." 



18 liberal views of the minority. 
Our Author's Eejoinder. 

To, this Mr. Baker replied, substantially, that it 
is absurd to say that an historical Church, the 
visible embodiment of the Kingdom of God on 
earth, is not possible on this principle of a volun* 
tary divine institution for Christian worship and 
Communion, — a gathering together of two or three 
in the name of Christ for Christian ordinances — 
when in fact this was the very formative principle 
of the Church through all its early history. 

A long and inflexible creed is a denominational 
device, not a Church necessity ; and it was largely 
because he, Mr. Baker, desired to do something 
in preparing the Presbyterian Church for the com- 
ing unity for which Jesus prayed, that he had 
raised a testimony against her narrow terms of fel- 
lowship, and had sought to make an honest opening 
for that large and more catholic view of the re- 
deeming work of the Church, which in his view 
must pervade that body before it will consent to 
abandon its sectarian position, and sacrifice its 
denominational interests upon the common altar of 
the one Church of the one Lord. 

Liberal Views of the Minority. 

At the close of Mr. Baker's defensive address 
before the Presbytery, Eev. H. E. Thomas took 
the side of defendant and upheld both his views 
and his position before the Presbytery. One of the 



HONEST LETTER OF PROTESTING PRESBYTER. 19 

elders and Eev. Dr. Barnard also opposed the 
adoption of the report, the former agreeing with 
Mr. Baker in moving for a revision of the Stand- 
ards, the latter opposing any attempt to deprive 
him of his standing in the Presbyterian ministry. 
He believed there was ample room for him in the 
Church, and while not endorsing all his beliefs, he 
thought Mr. Baker should have the fullest oppor- 
tunity to convince his brethren of the correctness 
of his views. If, in his deeper studies of the 
Word of God, he had found new light, the Church 
should have the benefit of that light. 



Honest Letter of a Protesting Presbyter. 

Eev. L. E. Coyle, a Presbyter who was necessa- 
rily absent from the West Jersey Presbytery at 
Atlantic City when action was taken on the report 
dismissing Mr. Baker, addressed a letter to the 
Presbytery, which he requested to have published 
as part of the record in the case. In it he says : 
" It were impertinent to remind you that Brother 
Baker is worthy of all respect, confidence and love, 
whether considered in the light of his Christian 
worth, disinterested honesty, or rich erudition. 

"You, who are veterans in the Presbytery, best 
know and honor him, and your esteem is in the 
direct ratio of your knowledge. Whatever re- 
pulse you might therefore offer him on account of 
his literary work, would react most painfully on 






20 HONEST LETTER OF PROTESTING PRESBYTER. 

your own hearts. Withdrawing yourself from him, 
you would do so only under the pressure of what 
seemed to you a most pitiless necessity. But, 
more than I can express, I wish this necessity did 
not appear to many so real, and so commanding of 
obedience. 

1 'I would our Presbyterian temple were built with 
a Court of the Prophets, where the deeper and more 
solemn thoughts of worthy men might not only be 
freely uttered, but received in the same spirit in 
which they were given. Would that there were a 
Jerusalem Chamber, which might be fearlessly re- 
opened and revisited, at least by such as being 
moved, beyond the multitude, with the desire to 
get at truth first hand, set themselves earnestly to 
study and understand the Scriptures, the one infal- 
lible rule of faith and practice, and so commune 
one with another and with the Church at large. 

" Fully believing that there is much work that 
might engage the industry of a second Westmins- 
ter Assembly, and that it is destined to be done by 
one means or another ; and thankful to have any 
such work, in however fragmentary shape, in the 
hands of men who are spiritually minded, and 
loyal in adherence to both the spirit and letter of 
Scripture, and not rudely iconoclastic as regards 
the old and established, I have no wish to see the 
Words of Reconciliation transferred beyond the 
limits of our own communion. Still less have I 
any conscience to condemn it, or any heart to vote 
in the direction of its removal. 



LINE OF DEFENSE RESUMED. 21 

u I believe that such teaching as that of Norman 
McLeod was God's good gift to the Scotch estab- 
lishment ; and that in such men as Maurice, 
Farrar and Phillips Brooks, permitted by their col- 
leagues to pursue their work without discourage- 
ment, many of the true things that are so old that 
they sound like new, have come out into the light 
of these latter days ; and one is glad to feel that, 
even if the ruling majority of our own Church 
cannot conscientiously allow standing room for 
teachers of this stamp, place is nevertheless found 
for them somewhere in the great Christian house- 
hold. But as long as a man is led to undertake 
and follow out his studies upon the same broad 
foundation as that which the Confession of Faith 
claims for itself, namely, 'The Scriptures of the 
Old and New Testaments the only infallible rule of 
practice and faith,' is it a mistake that he remain 
and work in the Presbyterian Church ? To this 
question permit me to submit my emphatic NO." 



Line of Defense Eesumed. 

In continuation of his defense, Mr. Baker said he 
had desired to stay within the Presbyterian Church, 
because he believed God had given him a testimony 
for that Church concerning its false position in 
holding on to formulas of doctrine, which were 
no longer heartily believed and preached by the 
Presbyterian ministry. He had tried to prevail 



22 LINE OF DEFENSE RESUMED. 

with the Presbytery to bring the matter to the 
attention of the General Assembly, and to arouse 
the Church through the press to its importance. 

He had not, however, assailed those traditional 
formulas without seeking, first, to show just where 
they were wrong, namely, in their misconception 
of the meaning of the provision to restore another 
life, that is, resurrection, to the human race, out of 
the pit of death and hell into which it was cast by 
the primal sin. He had striven to preach through- 
out the Presbyterian Church the true gospel of the 
resurrection of the dead, without which it is im- 
possible to understand the Old Testament, or to 
measure the gospel of the grace of God as unfolded 
in the New. But it was evident that there was 
no room for such a work within the limits of the 
Presbyterian system as now administered.* 

* Is there not ground for the criticism in one wing of 
the Protestant press in this country, that it is not 
enough to keep a man in the Presbyterian Church that 
he believe in and is loyal to the Bible, but also that he 
must believe in and be loyal to the precise interpreta- 
tion given to the Bible by the Westminster Confession 
of Faith, and to the interpretation given to the West- 
minster Confession of Faith by the accidental majority 
of a presbytery, a synod, or a general assembly? This 
is popery without its picturesqueness. This is to affirm 
the infallibility, not of a church in the living present, 
but of a church in the dead past. According to this, 
the end of the Reformation was the substitution, not of 
the Bible for tradition, but of Protestant tradition for 
Roman Catholic tradition, as the supreme judge. 



essential loyalty to truth. 23 

Incompatibility of Loyalty to Truth with 
Loyalty to Perversions of Truth. 

He sincerely loved that church. But he could 
no longer affiliate with the apparent, nay the con- 
fessed teaching of its standards as to "unspeakable 
torments with the devil and his angels in hell fire 
forever." No man, in his view, can be truly rec- 
onciled to God until he sees that God is not a God 
of hate, but of love. No man whose life has been 
lived under the dreadful impressions of God as the 
relentless tormenter of his creatures to endless ages, 
can be expected to take right views of either His 
holiness or His love. He claimed that the old doc- 
trine of endless torment is largely responsible for 
this. It terrorizes by a perverted view of God, 
until right moral action is made impossible. For 
everything in right conduct and in spiritual life 
depends upon a right knowledge of God. 

The question is, which is true? The alleged 
Westminster doctrine of an apparently implacable 
God, inflicting everlasting torment on His crea- 
tures? or the doctrine of a Lord God, merciful and 
gracious, even though He will by no means clear 
the guilty ; finding a way to restore life to men, 
even out of the depths of that death and hell to 
which His righteousness must and does consign 
them for their sins ; and yet never abating His dis- 
pleasure against sin, nor lowering for any one the 
unalterable condition, " Without holiness no man 
shall see the Lord 1 » ( Heb. 12:14.) 



24 THE GOSPEL OF RESURRECTION. 

We have repeatedly shown, says Mr. Baker in 
Words of Reconciliation j that the Presbyterian 
Standards make use of our Saviour's words out of 
their proper connection, that words spoken to 
Disciples only, to enjoin upon them the law of self- 
mortification as the way of life, are treated as 
warnings addressed to the multitude, against be- 
ing cast into hell, u where the worm dieth not and 
the fire is not quenched"; and that the judgment 
scene of Matt. 25, which relates to a judgment of 
mankind, beginning here in this life, and now go- 
ing on towards its consummation in eternity, is 
erroneously treated as something delayed until 
after a general resurrection of the dead. 

Thus the gospel of the resurrection, which is the 
God-given light thrown over these dark passages, 
is quite obscured ; and the appalling sentences of 
the Confession are made up of misunderstood and 
misapplied phrases, derived from a traditional 
Middle-age theology that ignores the hope toward 
God, that there shall be a benignant resurrection, 
both of the just and of the unjust. So that to a 
mind yearning for light the unknown realm beyond 
death without the prospect of redemptive resur- 
rection, is little else than Milton's Chaos and Old 
Night. 



THE CURRENT ESCHATOLOGY 
OF CHRISTENDOM. 



SECTION SECOND. 



A Survey of the Author's Eschatology. 



Let your divinity, if I may advise, be the divinity of 
the glorious Reformation. I mean in contradistinction 
to all the isms that were ever broached in this world of 
ignorance and error. The divinity of the Reformation 
is called Calvinism, but injuriously. It is not an Ism. It 
is the divinity of St. Paul and St. Paul's Master, who 
met him in his way to Damascus. 

The Poet Cowper to his kinsman, a young Theologue* 

On every side mysterious things abound, 
In earth and sky and ocean's deep domain, 
Which man's poor reason utterly confound, 
Beyond his power to fathom or explain. 
His mind is dark. In what way shall he see? 
O, God! Form Thou Thine image in my heart. 
Implant Thy likeness in my spiritual part, 
That so I may behold all things in Thee ! 
Thou art the source of light. That light, 

when through 
My darkened mind its radiance is streaming, 
In all its shadowy, secret places beaming, 
At once dispels the dimness of my view. 
In thy light seeing light my raptured eye 
Doth everywhere behold love and divinity 

Prof. T. C. Upham. 



CURRENT ESCHATOLOGY OF CHRISTENDOM. 



SECTION SECOND. 

OUTLINE OF AUTHOB'S ESCHATOLOGY. 

Sixce compiling the foregoing matter, mainly by 
careful comparison and eliminating from the valu- 
able Seed-bed of significant suggestions running 
through eight volumes of Words of Reconciliation, 
the writer has received from Mr. Baker himself, 
in answer to a request for a brief statement of his 
views in Eschatology, the following outline, in 
which there is taken the editorial liberty of cor- 
rection, addition and paraphrase where the lan- 
guage used seemed to be obscure, or insufficient to 
convey the meaning of the author : 

I hold that the resurrection, u As in Adam all die r 
so in Christ shall all be made alive" (I. Cor. 15:22), 
— which I define in no restricted sense, but as the 
gospel provision for another life for man beyond 
the period of his captivity in death — is essentially 
redemptive. It is a release from the wages of sin, 
i.e., death, and a gracious suspension to the course 



28 THE author's eschatology. 

of penalty. IsTo other conception of it is consistent 
with the Scripture that i i He by the grace of God 
should taste death for every man" (Heb. 2:9), 
and Himself rose from the dead, that all in like 
manner might rise. 

The Old Testament lays the foundation for the 
gospel of the resurrection, which "hope towards 
God" becomes definite and sure in the New. Judg- 
ment and penalty, therefore, instead of being post- 
poned until after the resurrection of the dead, must 
precede that resurrection. The death-state, or the 
being delivered over unto death in Hades, consti- 
tutes the natural penalty of sin "passed upon all 
men for that all have sinned." (Eom. 5:12.) 

The main proof-text of current Eschatology 
(Matt. 25:31-46) yields itself easily and naturally 
to this view, that the sentence to the aionion 
punishment is one passed upon all the living gen- 
erations of mankind, and not upon dead men raised. 
That passage, rightly understood, leaves the ques- 
tion open as to what change in the condition of 
those banished and lost ones in death, may come 
with their resurrection from the dead. 

Their consignment to the " eternal fire" — which 
I take to be a concrete term for the devouring 
iorces of nature that dissolve man in death, and 
may destroy both body and soul in hell — pre- 
cedes their recovery out of this pit of death and 
liell through resurrection. This new resurrection- 
life, however, although an emancipation and a 
boon, must be conferred in accordance with the 



THE AUTHOR'S eschatology. 29 

laws which prevail in all God's realms of life, and 
which require, "To every seed his own body." 

Those who in this life receive Christ, who are 
born of the Spirit, and thus are the elect of God, at 
once come under the power of Christ's resurrection, 
and pass out of death into life in Paradise. "They 
shall never die" (John 2:24). Wot that they 
shall never in the course of nature pass out of the 
body by the extinction of natural life, but they 
shall never know spiritual death, shall never 
again come under the power of the carnal mind, 
but shall be spiritually minded which is life and 
peace, and shall live and reign with Christ forever. 

All other men at death must lose their jDresent 
heritage of life (their souls) and go into bondage 
to death, a death deepened and prolonged accord- 
ing to the intensity of evil character attained here. 

But out of this prison house of death there is 
provided in the wisdom and love of God and in 
the course of the ages, a resurrection (I. Cor. 15: 
22, 23, 24). " So in Christ shall all be made alive. 
But every man in his own order," that is, period, 
aeon or age. Order First, "Christ, the first 
fruits" (Firstborn among many brethren, Eom. 
8:29 ), covering already a period of nearly nineteen 
hundred years. Order Second, " Afterwards they 
that are Christ's at His coming," 'the coming of 
our Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints ' (First 
Thess. 3:13), that is, at the inauguration of the 
new era in the Messianic reign, embracing what is 
called the millennium. Order Third, "Then the 



30 THE AUTHOR'S eschatology. 

end ( the final resurrection ), when He shall have 
delivered up the kingdom to God even the Father ; 
when He shall have put down all rule and all 
authority and power." 

This inspired Pauline scheme and order of 
resurrection gives room for all that Scripture 
teaches concerning the "resurrection of judgment" 
at the end of the world, that is, end of the age.* 

The restored life to all in resurrection is a bless- 
ing secured for all by Him who gave Himself a 
ransom for all ; but a blessing under such limita- 
tions and conditions as are imposed by the eternal 
law, that every one must receive in body according 
to the things done, whether good or bad. (See 
Greek of II. Cor. 5:10.) Those who, under the 
new conditions of trial and judicial correction in 
the resurrection period, prove "themselves to be 
unworthy of everlasting life" ( Acts 13:46), must 
suffer a " second death," out of which there is no 

* " The end of the age brought in by the second com- 
ing of Christ, and misleadingly translated the end of the 
world, in our common version, is supposed by many to 
close the probation of our race, winding up the present 
earthly scene and bringing in the final judgment and 
the eternal state, instead of opening into the triumphs 
of an age to come. Is it possible that the early Chris- 
tians could have had this idea ? If so, how could they 
have so ardently desired and earnestly looked for 
the coming of the Lord, since His coming would end 
the work of Gentile ingathering, while, as yet, only a 
handful had been saved ? 

"On the other hand, take the words of Peter to the 



THE AUTHOK'S ESCHATOLOGY. 31 

Scripture promise of a second resurrection, and 
which we may, therefore, infer to be their final sep- 
aration from the ever blessed God, the only Giver 
and Source of life : in which state of unalterable 
alienation from God it is reasonable to hold that no 
creature of His hand can live forever, Isa. 59:2, 
" Your iniquities have separated between you and 
your God, and your sins have hid His face from 
you, that He will not hear." 

Such is a brief outline of my views. I do not 
pretend that I therein have made the final applica- 
tion of the principle of a redemptive character in 
resurrection, to all the hard problems involved. 
But it will be found that this principle furnishes 

Jewish rejecters of Christ, and observe how clearly 
they teach the very opposite : Repent ye, therefore, 
and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that 
so there may come seasons of refreshing from the 
presence of the Lord ; and that He may send the Christ, 
who hath been appointed for you, even Jesus whom the 
heaven must receive until the times of the restoration 
of all things ( Acts 3:19-21, R. V.). 

"Here we have, as constantly throughout Scripture, 
the repentance of Israel directly connected with the re- 
turn of Christ from heaven, and their conversion and 
the Lord's appearing resulting, not in their cutting off 
from the presence of the Lord, not in winding up of all 
things, but in the restoration of all things. Three acts 
of the divine programme appear in this declaration of 
Peter — the coming of Christ, the conversion of Israel, 
and universal redemption." " Ecce Venit," page 54, by 
Dr. A. J. Gordon. 



32 THE author's eschatology. 

the safe and Scriptural basis upon which to adjust 
the two sides of Scripture teaching concerning 
judgment and redemption, concerning the claims 
of God's righteousness and the demands of His love. 

It will furnish also a ground for the reconcilia- 
tion of science and Scripture in what is to be 
learned from both concerning the origin and des- 
tiny of man. Eesurrection will be seen to be the 
crowning step in the progress of life, about which 
science as yet only knows in part and prophesies 
in part. But both science and enlightened Chris- 
tian consciousness will yet unite in rejecting with 
reason the inadmissible idea that the Infinite and 
All- wise Creator has proposed no higher good in the 
reconstruction of His type of man by resurrection 
than its preservation for eternal degradation and 
torment.* 

Is not such a conclusion repugnant to the moral 
sense of mankind, and to all we can know of the 
character of our Maker? 

*The pending question of revison with which the 
Presbyterian Church is now struggling, is likely to 
agitate it more profoundly than did the controversy 
between old and new school of half a century ago. The 
contest, however, as yet is only a skirmish along the 
frontiers of the difficulty. It must sooner or later reach 
the heart of it. At bottom, the discontent with the 
Confession is not with its doctrine of election. It is 
with the horizon by which the Confession bounds this 
mystery of God's electing grace. It assumes that the 
purpose of it stops with the salvation of the chosen com- 
pany, whereas they are only chosen as the vehicles of a 



THE author's eschatology. 33 

wider blessing to the rest of mankind, both living and 
dead. 

Four years ago I called the attention of the Church to 
the fact that the fundamental mistake of the West- 
minster Confession lies in its misconception of that 
prime verity of the Christian faith, the resurrection of 
the dead. By the term resurrection, I mean the gra- 
cious provision of another life for the human race 
beyond the death penalty it must suffer on account 
of sin. The Confession makes this provision an im- 
measurable disaster to all of mankind except the elect. 
The doctrine of Scripture is that there is hope for the 
dead in the purpose of God to raise the dead. All that 
is needed in order to clarify the conceptions of the 
Church upon this dark subject is a cordial acceptance 
of these two principles : 

1. The wages of sin is death. There cannot be two 
sentences for one thing in the divine government. The 
hell of Scripture, therefore, cannot be a superadded 
sentence, but a concrete term for those destructive 
agencies, whether this side the grave or beyond it, by 
which the original sentence is executed. All the Scrip- 
ture teaching, therefore, about the eternal fire must be 
grouped under this category. 

2. Resurrection is a recovery from the death- state, 
secured by the resurrection of Christ, and reaching every 
man in his own time and order, graded according to 
the law of the deeds done, making it to be a " resurrec- 
tion of life" to them that have done good and a "resur- 
rection of judgment " to them that have done ill. That 
is, such must be still kept under judicial restraint and 
correction. In this way all hope for the dead — even 
for dead infants and devout heathen — will group itself 
under the gracious purpose of God to restore life to 
the dead. 

The Presbyterian Church has been much agitated by 
the question, "Whither?" There is positively in this 



34 ROYAL PRIESTHOOD OF THE ELECT. 

drift no standing ground, either in logic or Scripture, 
between the severest statements of the Confession con- 
cerning the everlasting punishment of unjust men in 
hell fire, and the acknowledgment of this principle 
that there is an element of "hope toward God" in 
the resurrection of the unjust, as stated by St. Paul in 
Acts 24:15. 

For the assertion of this principle of a redemptive 
value in resurrection against the error of the Confes- 
sion that it is no boon, but a curse to the mass of man- 
kind, upon my own motion for advice in the matter, I 
was advised by the Presbytery to withdraw from the 
Church. Time will show that in this matter I was but a 
pioneer to point out to my brethren the only path that 
will lead them out of their present bewilderment. 

L. C. Baker, 2022 De Lancey place, Philadelphia. 



The Eoyal Priesthood of the Elect. 

An important adjunct to this view of the re- 
demptive character and place of the general resur- 
rection, is the consideration of the royal priesthood 
of the elect of mankind who are now in this life 
being made partakers of the salvation of Jesus ; 
of whom our Lord Himself said to Mary at the 
grave of Lazarus, u Whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die." They become the 
Church of the first-born, and so hold the right and 
duty of redemption, through a risen and reigning 
Saviour, towards their kindred and brethren of the 
human race who lose their heritage of life. They 
are " First fruits of God's creatures," James 1:18. 
First fruits imply a coming harvest. This iin- 



THE author's eschatology. 35 

mensely dignifies present salvation, and presents 
the very highest motives for self- surrender and 
devotion. At the same time it vastly augments 
the motive for missions. 

From this point of view the gospel invites men 
not only to immediate personal salvation, but to 
fellowship with Christ in His baptism for the dead, 
and in His redeeming administrations of the future- 
The anxious cry of the heathen, What of our an- 
cestors ? is thus to be met and satisfied, viz., be- 
cause Christ died and rose again, and made a pro- 
pitiation for the sins of the whole world, therefore 
they, our ancestors, are to wake again to life by 
the power of God at the time appointed, the general 
resurrection, and to a revelation of the Lord 
Jesus through the ministry of "the dead in Christ," 
1 \ The blessed and holy who have part in the first 
resurrection, on whom the second death hath no 
power, but they shall be priests of God and of 
Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years' ? 
(Rev. 20:6). 



Teaching of the Old Testament as to Re- 
demptive Resurrection. 

This view of the resurrection, Mr. Baker further 
says, was forced upon him from a study of the Old 
Testament. Behind its revelation of the wrath of 
God to be visited upon men and nations for their 
sins, a wrath which pursues ihem to death and 



36 THE AUTHOR'S E8CHATOLOGY. 

shuts them up as captives in Sheol, there are fre- 
quent promises of a future gracious intervention 
which shall reach these captives in death. 

The hope of this is defined in the New Testament 
(Acts 23:6) as " the hope and resurrection of the 
dead." That it includes classes of mankind, Jew 
and Gentile, who cannot by any stretch of defini- 
tion be viewed as regenerate, is plain from such 
passages as Hosea 13:14, where Ephraim joined to 
his idols, and a self- destroyed Israel, are promised 
succor through their ransom from Sheol, that is, 
their resurrection. " I will ransom them from the 
power of the grave ; O Sheol, I will be thy destruc- 
tion," and Ezekiel 16:51-56, where even Sodom is 
promised restoration from her captivity in death. 

Now it is this very promised provision of resur- 
rection in the Old Testament which makes the 
gospel of Jesus Christ in the New Testament "glad 
tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people," 
and nothing short of this can fulfill the oft-repeated 
promise that in a chosen seed — Christ and His 
Church — all the families of the earth shall be 
blessed. The special point, therefore, which is 
raised by Mr. Baker against the Presbyterian Con- 
fession is that it converts this provision, to rescue 
the human race out of the pit of death and hell, 
into an unspeakable curse to all but the elect : 
whereas the elect are the elect because they are 
chosen to the high honor of being the bearers of 
this bounty to their captive brethren. 



THE author's eschatology. 37 

Imperative Principle of Interpretation 

The Eschatological teaching of our Lord must 
then be interpreted in obedience to this funda- 
mental principle that there is a redemptive quality 
in resurrection. His warning words about being 
cast into hell — addressed privately to disciples 
(Mark 9:42-50) — relate to an immediate danger 
lying this side of resurrection of the dead. There 
isa "damnation of hell" (Matt. 23:33), of whichmen 
are in immediate danger, and which even disciples 
cannot escape, except as they are willing to sur- 
render to death the old man of sin. For, not 
" God out of Christ," as the text is constantly 
misquoted, but " Our God is a consuming fire." 

The elect Christian, the true believer, in thus 
yielding himself unto God, passes out of death into 
life, and becomes even now a sharer in his Lord's 
resurrection. All other men must " lose their 
souls " in death, and go into a captivity, deepened 
and prolonged according to the intensity of evil 
character contracted here. And their resurrection, 
when it is reached, although a deliverance, must still 
be u a resurrection of judgment;" that is, the new life 
conferred by resurrection is not an emancipation 
into the glory of the eternal life, but only into new 
conditions of trial and judgment, graded according 
to previous character, with the liability to a 
second death, out of which Scripture gives no 
promise of a second resurrection. 



38 . THE AUTHOR'S eschatology. 

The superiority of this scheme of Eschatology, 
as outlined above, is made to lie in this : 

1. It makes room for those large promises to 
the human race which underlie and pervade the 
Scriptures. 

2. It preserves, undiminished, the Scripture 
warnings against the loss of body and soul in hell, 
as an immediately impending peril. 

3. It makes the judgment of the world to begin 
at the right end, that is, the beginning of our 
Lord's Messianic reign, either His resurrection or 
Pentecost, and does not remand it to a remote 
assize of the future. 

4. It makes resurrection to be what it essen- 
tially is, a boon to all the race, the purchase of 
Him who gave Himself a ransom for all. 

5. It emphasizes the truth that this great har- 
vest of life must be reaped according to the 
universal law of deeds done : " To every seed 
his own body," and " Without holiness no man 
shall see the Lord." 

6. It gives a new meaning and motive to mis- 
sions, in that it proclaims not only an immediate 
salvation to the believer in Jesus, but invites such 
elect believers into that chosen company who in 
the sacrifice of themselves upon God's altar be- 
come " baptized for the dead," and as the elect 
teachers shine as the brightness of the firmament, 
and they that turn many to righteousness as the 
stars forever and ever, Dan. 12:3. So it makes 



THE author's eschatology. 39 

answer to the anxious cry of the heathen, "What 
of our ancestors % " 

7. It sets before the Church a much higher and 
more unselfish end than that of individual salva- 
tion, even fellowship with Christ in those ever- 
widening administrations of His kingdom, by 
which the power of His resurrection shall reach 
the countless generations* of the dead, and bring 
them all within the scope, if not experience, of His 
great salvation. 

8. It avoids the peril of bald universalism by 
showing that this restored life can become a bless- 
ing only as its subjects are made free from sin ; 
and that the more men now indulge in sin, or 
harden themselves against the gospel, the greater 
the disadvantages under which the new life will be 
conferred, and the greater the risk of its irretriev- 
able loss in the second death. Whether, however, 
this attempt to apply the principle of a redemptive 
character in resurrection to the solution of all dark 

* At a public meeting of the American Board of Mis- 
sions, when the condition and fate of the heathen living 
and dead were under discussion, and the question was 
lightly asked, What have we to do with dead heathen ? 
Professor Smyth of Andover impressively quoted the 
wail of the Poet : 

Oh ! the generations old ; 

Over which no church bells tolled ! 

Christless, lifting blinded eyes 

To the silence of the skies ! 

For the innumerable dead 

Is My Soul Disquieted. 



40 THE author's eschatology. 

problems be approved or not, the principle itself is 
held to be true, and that around it the current 
Eschatology of the universal church will have to 
be reconstructed. 



A Consensus of Theologians as to Old 
Testament Interpretations. 

In the judgment of not a few theologians of the 
past and present, it is impossible to interpret the 
Old Testament satisfactorily in any other way 
than as conveying a promise, that beyond the 
death and destruction which God visits upon men 
and nations for their sins in this life, He will raise 
up to another life in the future all those banished 
and lost ones now or to be under the power of 
death and hell. 

All our Saviour's words, too, in the New Testa- 
ment respecting retribution must be interpreted as 
subordinate to, and consistent with, this great 
gospel promise of redemptive resurrection. And 
He and His apostles further teach that the new 
gift of resurrection-life can be free from penalty 
and retribution only as those endowed with it shall 
become free from sin and loyal forever to the only 
name under Heaven given among men whereby 
they can be saved : unto which name, it is written, 
" Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess 
Jesus Christ to be Lord ; when He shall have 
given up the kingdom to God even the Father ; 



THE author's eschatology. 41 

when He shall have put down all rule and all 
authority and power. On such the second death 
shall have no power, but they shall be made unto 
our God, kings and priests, and shall reign on the 
earth." ( Eev. 5:9.) 

But for those resurrected yet incorrigible ones 
who, after their delivery from death and hell, with 
a fatal fixity of sinful character that tends to per- 
manence and perpetual bondage of the will to evil, 
still continue unreconciled to God, notwithstanding 
the revelation to them of His love in Jesus Christ, 
our Lord, there remaineth only everlasting destruc- 
tion from the presence of the Lord and from the 
glory of His power, even the blackness of darkness 
forever (II. Thess. 1:9 and Jude 13): which solemn 
Scriptures may mean such a never-ending separa- 
tion from the ever blessed God, the fountain of all 
good, and such an eternal deprivation of life and 
light and likeness to the perfect Creator, as to be 
virtual perishing and going out of being. But this 
mystery of mysteries,* who can fathom? It is one 



* There is a passage in one of the learned and profound 
works of Professor Tayler Lewis that is alike luminous 
and suggestive and apposite to the tremendous mystery 
referred to in the text. All our speculations, he says, 
run up at last into the unaccountable. The naturalist 
as well as the theologian has at last to take shelter in 
mystery. Everyone acquainted with Mercator's map 
of the world knows how increasingly monstrous be- 
come its projections the farther we get away from the 
familiar plane of the Equator. So must it be with every 



42 TIJE author's eschatology. 

attempt to project the finite upon the infinite, or, which 
is the converse of the same thought, to confine the in- 
finite to an identity with any forms and conceptions of 
the finite. One thing, however, the Bible does teach us 
beyond all question, and that is reverence. There are 
difficulties everywhere: science is revealing them much 
faster than she solves them, and one of her greatest 
wonders is that her revelations, in this respect, do not 
make her votaries more humble. " In Thy light do we 
see light," says the Psalmist, when speaking of the 
divine illumination ; but of human science the seeming 
paradox holds strictly true- -Through her light unaided by 
any higher beams, we see only an ever -increasing dark- 
ness. 

But the Scriptures, too, have their difficulties. Nature 
and redemption are both full of strange things. "Lo r 
these are but parts of His ways" (Job 26:14). The ex- 
pression is remarkable. Lo, these are but the ends of Hi& 
ways, is the true rendering of the Hebrew, " Only the 
ultimate linear boundaries of His ways." So Gesenius — 
Extremse linese viarum ejus. u The things that do ap- 
pear " are but the outside extremities, the mere ends of 
the threads, we may say, that stick out from the deep- 
laid warp and woof of Nature. The wondrous thought 
is carried on in the succeeding clause — "How little a 
whisper is heard of Him." And then the sublime con- 
trast — " But the thunder of His power who shall under- 
stand ?" If we can but just receive tke revelation of His 
glory as it is whispered to us in phenomena, who shall 
hear that awful voice, should it attempt to make known 
to us the essential mystery of the universe ? We may in- 
terrogate nature, we may interrogate revelation ; but 
when we have His answer through one or both, we have 
no right to interrogate farther the great Workman Him- 
self. "Who shall tap His hand and say unto Him — what 
workest Thou?" All such queries are met by the 
impressive rebuke of the Scripture, "Who hath directed 



THE AUTHOR'S ESCHATOLOGY. -43 

the Spirit of the Lord (the creative Ruah Elohim) or 
being His counselor hath taught Him? With whom 
took He counsel, and who instructed Him and taught 
Him the path of right, and showed to Him the way of 
understanding? Who shall touch His hand and say unto 
Hinu What doest Thou f ' ; '— The Six Days of Creation, 
pages 170 and 71. 

of the secret things belonging with the Infinite 
Lord our God, and impenetrable by finite man. 



The Poweb of a Eight Principle. 

In closing- now this all inadequate but honest 
digest and review of our author's opinions, and re- 
flecting upon the mark which is sometimes made, 
through a single mind taught of the Word and of the 
Spirit, or by the planting of a single right principle 
in the field of theological truth, it is in place to say 
with Eobert Browning, and with a special signifi- 
cance : 



'Tis in the advance of individual minds 

That the slow crowd must ground their expectation 

Eventually to follow : As the sea 

Waits ages in its bed, till some one wave 

Of the great multitude aspires, extends 

The empire of the whole, some feet perhaps, 

Over the strip of sand which could confine 

Its fellows so long time : Thenceforth the rest, 

Even to the meanest, hurry in at once, 

And so much is clear gain ! 



44 THE author's eschatology. 

The Son of God, it is the word of the beloved 
Apostle, has given us an understanding, that we 
may know Him that is true. Not the knowledge 
is given, let it be noted, but the ability, the power 
and the opportunity to gain that knowledge. If 
the intellectual possessions we have received from 
our predecessors are not to melt under our hands, 
they must be seized and appropriated by us anew. 
What of science and art we have inherited from our 
fathers we must acquire ourselves in order that 
we may truly possess it. 

All this is of superior importance in Biblical 
and theological matters, by as much as they rise 
into more enduring significance. God would have 
us personally devoted to His Book of Eevelation, 
earnestly intent upon its truths through the prayer- 
ful application of our own powers, guided and 
quickened by the Holy Spirit. Too much seeing 
through others 7 eyes, learning through others' toil, 
and taking for doctrines the commandments of 
men, may prove the most delusive kind of seeing 
and learning. Dogma is to be viewed and inter- 
preted to us by the light of Scripture, not Scripture 
by the light of dogma. 

If our Christianity is to become strong, it must 
cease, as soon as possible, to be fed with milk 
alone. New acquisitions of knowledge, new ad- 
vances of science, new phases and modes of thought, 
new forms of society, new developments of provi- 
dence, new departures, new hypotheses, new in- 
ventions, new discoveries, are always calling for 



THE author's eschatology. 45 

interpretation, for recognition, for adjustment, or 
for rejection. We grow into our best and deepest 
convictions, we are not dragged into them by 
dogma or compelled by the force of logic. 

Outcome of Discussion in the American 
Board. 

It was with these considerations in mind that 
the writer said, in the discussion before the Ameri- 
can Board at Springfield, on the Andover question, 
that in the gradual development of the meaning of 
the Holy Scriptures, in the normal study of last 
things, or what is called the Eschatology of divine 
revelation, a healthy advance has been made in 
our day, in the direction of unity, liberty and 
charity; and it is the observation of Gladstone, 
that popular theology, which, like many things 
else, tends to settle down into mere formulas, 
needs to be shaken up from time to time, and 
measured and adjusted to its eternal standards. 

Now, the Eternal Standard is the inspired Word 
of God, studied and interpreted by men of prayer, 
under the guidance and illumination of the Holy 
Spirit. And who shall say that the meaning of 
that word is yet exhausted or fully known ! 

Views of Butler, John Eobinson and the 
Poet Longfellow. 

It is the reasoning of Butler,* in the Analogy. 

* Butler's Analogy, part II., chapter 3, page 254. 



46 

" That as the whole scheme of Scripture is not yet 
understood, so, if it ever comes to be understood, 
before the restitution of all things, and without 
miraculous interpositions, it must be in the same 
way as natural knowledge is come at ; by the con- 
tinuance and progress of learning and of liberty, 
and by particular persons attending to, comparing 
and pursuing intimations scattered up and down in 
it, which are overlooked and disregarded by the 
generality of the world. 

"For this is the way in which all improvements 
are made — by thoughtful men tracing on obscure 
hints, as it were, dropped us by Nature accident- 
ally, or which seem to come into our minds by 
chance. Nor is it at all incredible that a book 
which has been so long in possession of mankind 
should contain many truths as yet undiscovered. 
For all the same phenomena and the same faculties 
of investigation, from which such great discoveries 
in natural knowledge have been made in the 
present and last age, were equally in possession of 
mankind several thousand years before, and pos- 
sibly it might be intended that events, as they 
come to pass, should open and ascertain the mean- 
ing of several parts of Scripture." 

Who now shall deny what saintly John Eobin- 
son said more than two-and-a-half centuries ago, 
that the Lord hath yet more of truth and light to 
break forth out of His Holy Word ? As our poet 
Longfellow has put it, true prophet that he was : 



THE author's eschatology 47 

There are great truths that pitch their shining tents 
Outside our walls; And though but dimly seen 
In the gray dawn, they will be manifest 
When the light widens into perfect day. 

The theological formulas of the Eeformation 
even, excellent as they were, and logical helps to 
thought as they still are, are not necessarily abso- 
lute truths, nor are they all of the truth that is 
contained in the simple and clear missionary 
theology of the Cross. It is that theology in re- 
spect to which Chalmers said so happily in his 
time : "The doctrines in which many now termi- 
nate, as if they were the ultimate truths of the 
record, will be found themselves subordinate to the 
one reigning expression of Heaven's kindness to 
the world by which the whole system of our re- 
demption is pervaded." 

The Missionary vs. the Mediaeval Theology. 

Now, it is under this Christocentric missionary 
theology of the Cross, not under any mediaeval 
system, that the Church of this day is advancing 
so joyously, with the psean and ring of victory, to 
the conquest of the world for Christ ; that glorious 
end toward which, in the phrase of Tennyson, 

" Throughout the ages one increasing purpose runs." 

And of the fifteen hundred or more consecrated 
men and women who are ascertained to be training 



48 THE author's eschatology. 

in our theological seminaries and colleges, and 
purposing to offer themselves for missionary 
service in foreign lands, who can doubt that many 
of them are holding a "permissible hope" as to 
the way in which God may give to such members 
of the human family as have not been favored with 
the knowledge of Christ in this life the opportunity 
of knowing Christ hereafter ?* 

Now, shall any such qualified men or women, if 
they offer themselves to the American Board, be 
denied a commission because of such a presumed 
defect in their theology or eschatology ? In the 
name of our blessed Lord and Master whose last 



* It was moved by the writer as an amendment to the 
motion for adoption of the committee's report, and as 
a legitimate way of directly reaching the all-absorbing 
question of the hour, and of procuring a free exchange 
of opinion by members, "That it is our judgment as a 
part of the loyal constituency and membership of the 
American Board assembled in annual meeting at Spring- 
field, that the honest confession of 'a permissible hope' 
as to the way in which God may give to such members 
of the human family as have not been favored with the 
knowledge of Christ in this life the opportunity of 
knowing Christ hereafter, should not be made a barrier 
of disqualification to foreign mission service under this 
Board in the case of any competent and consecrated 
men or women offering themselves therefor and other- 
wise unobjectionable." This was immediately voted to 
be out of order, and it was not, therefore, entertained 
or acted upon, although the mover was assured that it 
expressed the undoubted sense of a large proportion of 
the assembly. 



THE AUTHOR'S ESCHATOLOGY. 49 

command has no condition, but the sure promise, 
" Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the 
world, " let us say no. In the name of our late, 
large-minded president, now passed into the 
heavens, let us say no. In the name of the long 
line of faithful missionaries of the Cross here 
represented, who counted not their lives dear to 
themselves, that they might have the joy of preach- 
ing the gospel as heralds of salvation to the perish, 
ing heathen, let us say no. And let the trusted 
prudential committee so understand it, who are 
but the actuaries of these Evangelical Churches, 
the disbursers of their consecrated missionary 
offerings, and who now leasonably ask and expect 
instruction as to the policy to be pursued in the 
immediate future by this Heaven- blest Board, 
whose action here and now is commanding the in- 
terested attention of the whole Protestant world. 



Dr. Stores' Presumptive Assent to Eedemp- 

TIVE BeSURRECTIOX. 

Dr. Storrs' letter of acceptance to the presidency 
of the American Board should settle it in mission- 
ary circles that the " Scriptural soundness and 
value ? ' of the larger hope for the human race 
through redemptive resurrection, may be made 
manifest. He admits that in the discussions 
which are going on, and to which he professes 
to give full toleration, the claim of such a hope 



50 THE AUTHOR'S ESCHATOLOGY. 

may be established. His language is: u The ques- 
tions of Eschatology, vast as they are, wide in their 
relations, and intensely attractive to many minds, 
are sure to be discussed in years to come, perhaps 
more largely and profoundly than they have been 
heretofore. Congregational scholars and divines 
will take, no doubt, a distinguished part in such 
discussions ; and it may be that in the final result 
the new opinion is to gain such power as it has not 
yet secured. " 

In harmony with this view, he would have the 
prudential committee relax somewhat the rigid 
rule by which they have excluded from missionary 
service some earnest applicants who could not 
positively decide that death bounds all hope. And 
he says : " I have no doubt that considerate care 
will be exercised to discriminate between the want 
of an opinion and the presence of one which implies 
or favors the objectionable theory; between even 
a vague hope, acknowledged to be unsupported by 
the Scriptures, only personal to one's- self and held 
in silent submission to subsequent correction, and 
a distinct dogmatic tendency or a formulated con- 
viction. 

" No doubt the shadings of thought at this point 
will be delicate and intricate in some minds, while 
in most the fact that the Master said nothing about 
any future opportunities, together with the inten- 
sity of His appeals for immediate repentance, and 
the solemn urgency of His imperative command 
for instantaneous missionary effort, will make the 



THE author's eschatology. 51 

theory of such future opportunities appear quite 
incredible. 

"In the other and smaller class of cases (he con- 
tinues), I am sure that the majority of the Board 
would wish, as I should, that great pains should 
be taken to disentangle feeling from conviction, a 
sympathetic impulse from a controlling theological 
bias ; that constant tenderness should be shown to 
those who are treading with diffident steps on the 
high places of inquiry for the truth, and that due 
regard should always be had to the probable in- 
fluence of an earnest missionary zeal, and the 
educational force of missionary work pursued in a 
temper of loyalty to Christ, upon the formation of 
future opinion in those whose impressions are now 
tentative and unfixed. ?? 

Charitable Construction of Diplomatic 
Language. 

The criticism of our author upon the guarded 
language of Dr. Storrs is this : that the whole letter 
is irenic and admirable in tone, and will go far to 
promote the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace 
among the Board's constituency, and to preserve 
its usefulness unimpaired, until such time as God 
shall give these brethren greater light upon the 
true nature of redemptive resurrection as a hope 
toward God ; and of the relation of this hope to His 
ancient promise of blessing to all the families of 
the earth through a chosen seed. 



52 THE author's eschatology. 

On the other hand, the venerable Dr. Noah 
Porter does well to call attention* to the fact, of 
which he was personally cognizant so far as per- 
tains to the American Board, " That in the dawn 
of modern missions the truth was distinctly seen 
by prophetic minds, that the new movements of 
evangelistic zeal would assuredly give to the Church 
a simpler, a more Biblical, a more loving, and a 
more catholic theology, as well as a larger inspir- 
ation of the Christian life. 

" This anticipation has been signally fulfilled in 
our day, and very largely by the agency of the 
Congregational Churches. While other bodies 
have been rent in twain by the tension of the new 
theological and evangelical life, these churches 
have been schooled by their controversies into 
wiser, practical lessons of tolerance and freedom 
on the one hand, and fervor and consecration on 
the other ; and God forbid that we should ever 
barter our theological freedom, or our evangelistic 
zeal, for dogmatic intolerance or ecclesiastical 
management." 

A Eesume of the Author's Views. 

Before bringing to an end this review of the 
Eschatology of our author, his relation to the 
Presbyterian Church and Confession, and the just 
method of their reform, it is due to him to present, 

*New Englander, Dec. 1888. 



THE author's eschatology. 53 

for the most part in his words, a virtual resume 
of his views, found in the fourth volume of Words 
of Reconciliation, on pages 177 and 178 ; and in 
volume VII., pages 211 and 218, and pages 228-236. 

The True Ground of Immortality. 

Christianity needs to base its hope of immor- 
tality for man more distinctly upon the fact that 
Christ is risen, and that perishable man is to live 
again, not because of his inherent immortality,* 
but because God has provided that in Him, the 
Christ, all shall be made alive. And this new 
resurrection -life for the race of man through its 
second Adam, the ideal perfect man, must be 
viewed as but the consummation of a creative pro- 

* The weight of Scripture testimony is that man, as to 
both body and soul, is perishable. We freely admit 
that an immortal spirit of life from God lives in him. 
But the very question at stake in his moral training is 
whether this life of God shall build for itself an eternal 
habitation in him. He may become so degraded in 
character, he may so judge himself unworthy of eternal 
life, that this immortal spirit may not only cease to 
strive with him, but to live in him. In that case his 
personality and individual being must vanish away. He 
fails of eternal life. 

Our Saviour teaches that men may so harden them- 
selves against the grace of God as " to have no forgive- 
ness, neither in this world nor in the world to come." 
But the doctrine of " a resurrection of judgment " gives 
hope for the dead, that their failure here is not neces- 



54 THE AUTHOR'S ESCHATOLOGY. 

cess and promise begun from the foundation of the 
world (Titus 1:2) and necessary to complete the 
design of the Author, which is to bring forth out 
of the matrix of this system an anointed race 
worthy to wear its crown, and to be, under Christ, 
the administrators of His authority and bounty to 
endless ages. 

We affirm, then, without hesitation that " the 
hope and resurrection of the dead JJ ( Acts 23:6 ) 
is not rightly understood in the Christian Church. 
The vast majority of mankind have died in their 
sins. The just judgment of God in conformity to 
the nature of things has consigned them to Sheol. 
Christians have generally been taught to look upon 
their promised resurrection from Sheol as no 
deliverance from their penal state, but as a pre- 
lude to a deeper and eternal damnation. 

sarily final and remediless. That all will be saved, that 
there will be no refuse of human souls in this great 
work- shop of God, is too much to affirm. 

But that He is bound by His own character, or by His 
Word, to endow every creature of the human race with 
personal immortality, we are not required to believe, 
either by the analogies of nature or by the statements 
of His Word, although we may be sure that those who 
are unworthy of this dignity of immortality, and who 
must therefore be cast away, are not doomed to an end- 
less existence in hopeless torture. They may go down 
in the scale of creation until they become "like brute 
beasts made to be taken and destroyed." But if so, they 
must like them "utterly perish in their own corruption" 
(II. Peter 2:12).— Words of Reconciliation, Volume IV., 
page 232. 



THE author's eschatology. 55 

This is a monstrous perversion of the design of 
God in providing for their recovery. It is a muti- 
lation of the gospel. It uproots the very founda- 
tions of the "hope toward God," as they are laid 
in the Old Testament and finished in the New. It 
hides His grace and glory from the nations. It is 
the chief cause of the ill-success of the Church in win- 
ning the heathen. It has darkened men's minds 
everywhere to the true knowledge of God and of 
Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, whom to know 
aright is life eternal. 

It has taken the joy and sweetness out of multi- 
tudes of Christian lives, and quenched in them the 
spirit of self-sacrifice by concealing the true hope 
of their calling, which is to take part with Christ 
in His work of recovering their captive brethren 
of the human race from death and sin, and that if 
they are to reign with Him, they must be willing 
now to suffer with Him. 

We know, therefore, of no sphere of service 
more important than the effort to rekindle the 
light of this true " hope toward God " in the night 
of the world's darkness and unrest, and no higher 
motive to holiness than the invitation to be bap- 
tized into Christ's death, that we may know and be 
the chosen vessels of the power of His resurrection. 

What Will Follow a Correct View of 
Redemptive Resurrection. 

The gospel of the redemptive resurrection, when 
understood, will give a new meaning to all Scrip- 



56 THE author's eschatology. 

ture. It will be seen to be the hidden gem im- 
bedded in all its great promises. It will recon- 
struct not only the Eschatology of the Church, but 
much of her theology also. It will throw new 
light upon the whole doctrine of the incarnation 
and of the atonement. It will supply the much- 
needed meeting- ground between science and 
Scripture, and reconcile reason with revelation. 

It will furnish the missionary of the Cross with 
a conquering gospel, that shall be indeed glad 
tidings of great joy to all people, and shall silence 
the wail of the heathen over their countless dead. 
It will reclaim the Church to a true view of her 
standing as an elect people called out from the 
world, and bound to separate themselves from its 
evil ways, both as the condition of the world's sal- 
vation and of her own fitness to take part in it. It 
will be seen that it is her mission not to sweep all 
the world within her enclosure, but to prepare 
herself to be the future channel of blessing to the 
world in that day, so swiftly drawing nigh, when 
the God of peace shall bruise Satan under her feet. 

In brief, a radical misconception of the purpose 
of God in bringing back the race to life through 
the resurrection, has vitiated the entire theology 
and marred the whole development of the Church 
of Christ. It has put a mask upon the face of 
Jehovah. What with the hyper-Calvinism of 
eternal reprobation, it has justified the imputed 
answer of John Wesley to George Whitfield, u Your 
God is my devil I " 



THE author's eschatology. 57 

The gospel of the resurrection has faded out 
largely from the Christian Church before the 
blight and gloom of the so-called gospel of endless 
punishment. 

Bedemptive Besurrection both in the Old 
Testament and the New. 

The ways of God in redemption have been hidden 
from the eyes of men. There is no longer a gospel 
" of the hope and of the resurrection of the dead " 
such as Paul preached. The hope of humanity 
has been pared down to the hope of an elect class 
of saints. What the New Testament represents as 
only a first fruit is put for the whole harvest. The 
Old Testament, in which the foundations for this 
hope are deeply laid, is no longer thoroughly 
studied as it should be. 

The question is raised in some quarters, even of 
the Church, as to whether it is profitable to give 
heed to those old Jewish Scriptures. Their real 
inspiration is denied by many who call themselves 
Christians, by not a few religious teachers, who 
are thereby shorn of power as expounders of the 
Divine Word. But the true answer to Ingersoll 
lies here — in a truer conception of the i ' hope 
toward God" for mankind, to which all the 
prophets bear witness, and of which the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ was the pledge. 

The narrow limits within which dogmatic 
theology has confined this hope, and within which 



58 THE author's eschatology. 

Ingersoll received his early training, led him to re- 
gard the gospel as a message of despair.* He 
must be shown that it was meant to be u glad 
tidings of great joy to all people/' and that Jesus 
Christ is the anointed Saviour and Judge over all 
the kingdoms of the dead as well as of the living ; 
that to Him have been given the keys of death and 



*"This mistake concerning the purpose of God in rais- 
ing the dead has vitiated the Eschatology of the Church 
for fifteen centuries. It has drawn a mask over the 
face of the Lord and has blinded men to the knowledge 
of the only true God, and of Jesus Christ, whom He has 
sent. This mistake has largely arisen from the attempt 
to fix a meaning upon the words of Christ con- 
cerning the punishment of the wicked, without a pre- 
vious study of the Old Testament conceptions, out of 
which this teaching grew, and upon which it was based. 
Our book carries its readers back to this beginning, 
and invites them to proceed from it to the study of the 
whole subject of man's destiny, of God's great plan of 
grace, and of the Church's priestly calling under it. It 
finds in the principle that resurrection is redemptive, 
the key to the mysteries of the subject. With this in 
hand we are enabled to give proper place to the 
Scripture -teaching about the punishment of sin, in that 
it makes the death- state, or Sheol, to be essentially 
penal, deepened and prolonged according to the inten- 
sity of evil character ; and in that it makes resurrection 
a process of sorting and judgment, as well as of deliver- 
ance." 

Preface to the work of L. C. Baker entitled " The Fire 
of God's Anger, or Light from the Old Testament upon 
the New concerning Future Punishment." 



THE AUTHOR'S ESCHATOLOGY. 59 

Hades, not as a prison-keeper, but as a liberator, 
that even the dead might hear His voice and live. 



How to Meet Ingersoll.* 

Eternal life, it is true, can never be God's gift to 
any who do not receive His Son. But an oppor- 
tunity to know Him, and to believe on His name, 
is guaranteed to all in the fact that He gave Him- 
self a ransom for all from the dead, and therefore 



* Would that the modern doubter could but be made 
to listen thoughtfully to the appeal of Tennyson in the 
immortal poem of the " Ancient Sage :" 

Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt, 

And cling to faith beyond the forms of faith ! 

She reels not in the storm of warring words : 

She brightens at the clash of "yes" and " no." 

She sees the Best that glimmers thro' the worst : 

She feels the sun is hid but for the night : 

She spies the summer thro' the winter bud. 

She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls. 

She hears the lark within the songless egg. 

She finds the fountain where they wailed "Mirage !" 

I asked my uncle, said the niece of the great poet, 
whether he agreed with Bacon's dictum that Pilate's 
question, " What is truth ? " was put jestingly. " No," 
he unhesitatingly answered, " it was in no spirit of jest- 
ing he uttered those words. They may have been ac- 
companied with a shrug of the shoulder. They may 



60 THE author's eschatology. 

the promised resurrection of all cannot bring with 
it, or after it, the re-duplicated doom of most of its 
subjects to an endless hell. That resurrection 
must be a gracious intervention and a boon. 

In the present fusion and ferment of ideas on 
this great subject, we are well persuaded that the 
principle of a redemptive resurrection is the one 
about which the new forms of faith will crystallize, 



have been spoken in a cynical tone, but I rather believe 
that they were wrung from the depths of a heart that 
had learned there was no truth in the religious systems 
then in vogue, and knew not where to find it. Alas ! 
that we should hear this cry repeated in our own age, 
and that men should fail to find their souls' craving for 
truth satisfied by Christianity. 

"The great spread of agnosticism and unbelief of all 
kinds seems to me to show that there is an evil time 
close at hand. Sometimes I feel as if it would not sur- 
prise me to see all things perish. I firmly believe that 
if God were to withdraw Himself from the world around 
us, for but one instant, every atom of creation, both 
animate and inanimate, would come utterly to naught, 
for in Him alone do all beings and things exist. He can 
and does answer every earnest prayer, as I know from 

my own experience We shall have much to 

learn in a future world, and I think we shall all be 
children to begin with when we get to Heaven, what- 
ever our age when we die ; and we shall grow on there 
from childhood to the prime of life, at which we shall 
remain forever. My idea of Heaven is to be engaged 
in perpetual ministry to souls in this and other worlds." 
From The Contemporary Review. 



THE AUTHOR'S eschatology. 61 

and become clear and sparkling with the light of 
the knowledge of the glory of God as it shineth in 
the face of Jesus Christ ! 

The criticism, therefore, which we are compelled 
to make upon the prevalent Eschatology of Chris- 
tendom, is that it leaves the vast armies of the 
Christless dead without hope ; ' fixed in an eternal 
state;' the moral condition in which death found 
them unchanged, and the resurrection itself "a 
resurrection of damnation." 

But is not Jehovah the God of the dead as well 
as of the living ? Is death a foe in His universe 
so masterful as to have shut up forever the myriads 
of the dead beyond His power to bless ? Away 
with such a perversion of His Word of truth and 
grace, and such a foul aspersion on Him who is 
mighty to save even to the uttermost ! "For to 
this end Christ both died and rose and revived, 
that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the 
living" (Eom. 14:9 ). 



Current Eschatology — How to be Clarified. 

Until, then, the Eschatology of the Church is 
clarified by a new and radical treatment of the two 
primal verities of death and resurrection, she must 
continue to suffer under her present bewilderment, 
and an element of weakness will enter into all her 
attempts to formulate the Christian faith. But 



62 . THE AUTHOR'S ESCHATOLOGY. 

thanks be to God, it is because this perversion of 
God's Word, this libel upon His character and 
ways is in this day being exposed, and because the 
shackles it has put upon the spiritual progress of 
mankind are being cast off, that we are so hopeful 
for the future. i 'The veil spread over all nations, J 7 
of which Isaiah writes (Ch. 25), is being removed. 
And we are already in the dawn of that coming 
day when men shall say, " Lo, this is our God; we 
iave waited for Him, and He will save us : this is 
the Lord ; we will be glad and rejoice in His salva- 
tion." 



Signs of the Times — How to be Interpreted. 



We do not blind ourselves to the fact that there 
are signs in the heavens of great political and social 
upheavals. We are no such prophets of smooth 
things as to forget that " the things which can be 
shaken ? ' in all existing institutions of Church or 
state will be shaken, until their falsity is revealed 
and they are transformed or removed. The false 
idols which men have been rearing in the place of 
God and Christ cannot be thrown down without 
great commotion. The world- Babylons of govern- 
ment and trade which have been built up on the 
denial of His law of righteousness and love, must 
bring great ruin in their fall, and darken the skies 
with the smoke of their burning. Such storms 



THE AUTHOR'S E3CHATOLOGY. 63 

must precede the clear shining of the morning 
without clouds. 

But " the night is far spent, the day is at hand." 
The theories of mediaeval traditionalists that have 
so stripped the doctrine of resurrection of its hope- 
ful and redemptive features for the race at large as 
to make it to be a boon only to a select class, and 
an unutterable curse and horror to all the rest, are 
losing their grip on the Church, because those 
views are plainly seen to be contrary to the " hope 
toward God" which runs through the Bible, and 
makes it a priceless boon to all mankind. 

While holding firmly to the plenary inspiration 
of the sacred Text, positive specialists have built 
up special dogmas from special texts, apart from 
the spirit of the whole, until their faith has taken 
shape in distorted forms, by reason of the darkness 
which comes from the obscuration of this hope. 

Dogmas Found to be Hindrances Instead of 
Helps. 

It is in this way that the dreadful dogma of eternal 
torment has so long hindered men, even in the 
Church, from the right knowledge of God. Election 
and pretention have been fought for by those who 
viewed themselves as the chosen defenders of the 
crown-rights of Jehovah, and who yet, because of 
their ignoring of this "hope toward God," were 
blinded to the true meaning of all Scripture. They 



64 THE author's eschatology. 

have failed to see that the chosen seed are elected 
as a seed of blessing to all the race, and that ' ' the 
Church of the first-born which are enrolled in the 
Heaven, " implies that there are to be later-born 
sons in the great family of Him from whom every 
family in Heaven and earth is named. 

On the other side, our modern progressives 
would be holding a truer view of inspiration and 
of the structure of the Bible if they had a better 
conception of the plan that runs through the whole. 
Some of their extreme men have even asserted 
that there is no doctrine of a future life in the 
Old Testament. And yet this was the very thing 
for which the risen Jesus reproached His disciples 
as u fools and blind, " — that they had not dis- 
covered how " Thus it is written, and thus it be- 
hooved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the 
dead the third day." He opened their under- 
standing that they might perceive that this was 
the very hope the prophets had testified to con- 
cerning Himself. He proved the old* Scriptures 



* The supreme value of the Bible does not lie in the 
fact that it is the ultimate source of theology, but in the 
fact that it contains the whole message of God's love ; 
that it is the personal message of that love to me ; not 
doctrine but promise ; not the display of God's meta- 
physical essence, but of His redeeming personality ; in 
a word of Himself as my God. 

Filled with this new light as to the meafring of 
Scripture, Luther displays profound contempt for the 



THE author's eschatology. 65 

to be freighted with the burden of a great hope for 
all mankind, of which our most optimistic teachers 
do not yet discern the full meaning, because they 
depreciate the very Scriptures which are the 
treasure-house of this hope. 

The Key to God's Plan of Bedemption. 

Hence they need also a truer discernment of the 
divine plan and purpose which run through the 
Bible and bind it all together, and which, if appre- 
ciated, would exalt their views of its inspiration. 
All that this class of interpreters have been seek- 



grubbing theologians of his day, who treated the Bible 
as a mere storehouse of proof texts, dealing with it, as 
he says of Tetzel, "like a sow with a bag of oats." 

The Bible is a living thing. The Middle Ages had no 
eye for anything but doctrinal mysteries, and where 
these were lacking they saw only, as Luther complained, 
" bare dead histories, which had simply taken place and 
concerned men no more." "Nay," say the Reformers ; 
"this history is the story of God's dealings with His 
people of old. The heart of love which He opened to 
them is still a heart of love to us. The great pre-emi- 
nence of the Bible history is that in it God speaks — 
speaks not in the language of doctrine, but of personal 
grace, which we have a right to take home to us now, 
just as it was taken home by His ancient people." — 
W. Robertson Smith. The Old Testament in the Jewish 
Church. Lecture I. The Bible and the Reformation, page 
13. 



66 THE author's eschatology. 

ing in a doctrine of God that would bring Him 
into closer sympathy and union with man, and in 
a doctrine of man that would fill men with larger 
hope for the race, can be found in these Scriptures; 
not by bringing them down to a lower level, but 
by entering into their true meaning with this key 
in hand, that God has provided to redeem the race 
from death, because this present life is not long 
enough in which to carry out toward the race all 
His purposes of grace. His plan of redemption, 
therefore, is to perfect a chosen seed, the elect, as 
the channel of blessing to all the rest. 

The doctrine of redemptive resurrection when 
fully understood will be found broad enough to 
give room for all that true science has to teach con- 
cerning the struggle of the fittest to survive, and all 
that biology has to teach concerning the origin and 
perpetuation of life, and all that psychology has to 
teach of the constitution of the soul, and all that a 
reasonable theosophy has to teach about the harvest- 
law of character and the re-embodiment of human 
souls according to deeds done, and room also for 
all the mysteries of reward and punishment of 
Heaven and hell. 



A Necessary Condition to the Harmony of 
Saints. 

No other one concept in Christian theology is 
now so much needed to adjust all its controversies, 



THE author's eschatology. 67 

to reconcile it with science, to stop heresy-hunting, 
to harmonize it with the universal religious thought 
of the race, and to equip it for victory among the 
nations, as a right conception of its fundamental 
doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. And 
until this right conception is reached, the crisis in 
theology must grow more intense, the controversies 
more bitter, the revolution more radical, until the 
wood, hay and stubble which men have been so 
long building into the temple of God shall have 
been shaken out of the structure and burnt up in 
His consuming fire. 

What is needed to cure the evils of human bodies 
and of bodies politic is a new recognition of the 
fact that Jesus was raised from the dead to become 
a new centre around which the whole of humanity 
is to be reorganized. The law of His triumphant 
life is love, finding its own highest good in seeking 
others' good. To this end His Spirit is penetrat- 
ing the hearts of men, and slowly uplifting all the 
forms and institutions of society to higher levels. 

The more readily men co-operate with this 
divine movement in the world, the more quickly 
will they be borne on its bosom to the haven of in- 
dividual rest and happiness. And the more they 
submit their own lives to the operation of this 
Christ-Spirit, the more surely will His saving 
health be known among all nations (Psa. 67:2). 
The whole organism of humanity, both in the 
aggregate and in the individual, is the field in 
which this Divine Spirit works ; and the whole is 



68 THE author's eschatology. 

so bound together that the happy release of even 
the dead is made dependent upon the fidelity of the 
living. What any one man does to uplift and 
bless his fellow-men uplifts himself, and what he 
does to drag them down must sink himself here- 
after into the same mire. Every one, therefore, 
has the highest motive to give himself to the help- 
ing of others, after the example of the Son of Man, 
who came not to be ministered unto, but to min- 
ister, and to give His life a ransom for many (Matt. 
20:28). To assume, then, that the Church is to be 
kept in bondage to any form of dogma save, as like 
the apostles' creed, it gives expression to the pri- 
mary facts of the Christian faith, is to ignore the 
first principle that enters into its structure and 
makes it a living organism for the Holy Spirit. 

Any man who is led of the Spirit into a larger 
knowledge of the thoughts and ways of God as 
made known in either His works or Word, is to 
hold that knowledge as a trust for his brethren. 
His vows of loyalty to them and to Christ require 
that he should seek to bring them up to the level 
of his higher conceptions of truth and duty. 

If these be higher than there is any place for in 
his old creed, then it becomes his sacred duty to 
seek to amend and reform that creed. And he has 
no right to go out of the Church of his choice until 
he has made honest endeavor to do this, or until 
he is disowned and cast out by his brethen ; who 
must thenceforward take upon themselves the re- 
sponsibility of rejecting one whom God has sent. 



THE author's eschatology. 69 

Priestly Position of the Church to the 
Human Eace. 

It is never to be lost sight of that the Church 
holds a priestly position toward all the race of man 
out of which it is chosen, and closely knit together 
into one body under Christ the Head. The suffer- 
ings of one member become the suffering of all, the 
joy and victory of one the joy and strength of all. 
Death cannot divide this body. The living are 
still fighting the battles which the dead laid down, 
and the departed have still a common interest in 
the conflicts, the trials and the triumphs of the 
living. 

" The saints on earth and all the dead 
But one communion make." 

Science links in one bundle of life and by strange 
ties of kinship and heredity the generation of the 
present with the generations of the past; so that 
we are the heirs of their treasures and hopes, and 
they, without us, cannot be made perfect. The 
field of our life is sown with the seed of their lives, 
and they partake with us in the fruits of the har- 
vest. 

This view, confirmed to us both by Scripture and 
science, presents the highest motives to individual 
endeavor to conquer in the battle of life. Salva- 
tion becomes no longer a selfish question of per- 
sonal safety. The salvation of those to whom we 



70 THE AUTHOR'S eschatology. 

are bound by the tenderest ties, is linked with our 
own. No man liveth to himself and no man dieth 
to himself. He cannot win the crown of life for 
himself alone. There must be those who will be 
his joy and crown in the day of the Lord Jesus. 

All his efforts in the faith of Christ to lift up 
himself along the path to holiness which leads to 
God's right hand, will help others also. His most 
effective work in soul-saving is seen to be wrought 
in the discipline and growth of his own soul. The 
power of God may work in him to the salvation of 
those whom he has never seen with the eye of 
sense, and whom he has never known after the 
flesh. And by as much as he in this life prepares 
himself and is being prepared by grace for his high 
station and calling as a child of God and joint heir 
with Christ, by so much will he be fitted to enter 
beyond this life, upon those potential ministries 
of grace whereby he may help those he leaves be- 
hind him along their toilsome path of life, and so 
be a benefactor to the whole family of man. 

The Eevival of Faith a Sine Qua Non to 
Victory. 

We need in the Church of our day a revival of 
faith in the divine Spirit of life and power, who is 
able to give us victory over all physical as well as 
spiritual enemies — the two indeed are identical — 
and who can, here and now, in this respect bruise 
Satan under our feet. 



THE author's eschatology. 71 

In this connection it is interesting to notice that 
the New Testament plainly looks forward to such 
a triumph of the divine Spirit in even these mortal 
bodies of ours as shall fit them for translation to 
the immortal sphere without death. We shall not 
all sleep, but we shall all be changed ( I. Cor. 
15:51) . " Who shall change our body of humilia- 
tion that it may be conformed unto the body of 
His glory' 7 (Phil. 3:21). 

Such predictions seem to forecast a time when 
the power of God shall act with such energy in 
and through human bodies, that they shall put on 
immortality without seeing corruption. And this 
may lead us to reflect whether our common notions 
of the inherent depravity of the body do not need 
revision, and whether this highest product of God's 
handiwork, so curiously and wonderfully made, 
so long degraded to vile uses, may not be capable 
of such purifying and renovation that death shall 
no longer be a needful process, but in lieu of it 
there shall be simply a " change from glory to 
glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord " (II. Cor. 
3:18). 

With such a clear and hopeful outlook on the 
future, we close this Section with a gem from 
Horatius Bonar, beloved hymnist of the millen- 
nium, whose cheerful faith like Milton's 

" Abated not a jot of heart or hope, 

But still bore up, and steered right onward. " 



72 THE AUTHOR'S eschatology. 

GREAT TRUTHS are dearly bought. The common truth, 

Such as men give and take from day to day, 

Comes in the common walks of easy life, 

Blown by the careless wind across our way : 

Bought in the market at the current price, 

Bred of the smile, the jest, perchance the bowl, 

It tells no tales of daring or of worth, 

Nor pierces even the surface of the soul. 

GREAT TRUTHS are greatly won, not gained by chance, 

Not wafted on the breath of summer dream ; 

But grasped in the great struggle of the soul, 

Hard buffeting with adverse wind and stream : 

Not in the general mart, 'mid corn and wine ; 

Not in the world's gay hall of midnight mirth, 

Not in the merchandise of gold and gems, 

Nor 'mid the blaze of regal diadems. 

BUT IN THE DAY of conflict, fear and grief, 
When the strong hand of God put forth in might, 
Ploughs up the sub -soil of the stagnant heart, 
And brings the imprisoned truth- seed to the light ; 
Wrung from the troubled spirit in hard hours 
Of weakness, solitude, perchance of pain, 
Truth springs, like harvest from the well -ploughed field, 
And the soul feels it has not wept in vain. 



THE author's eschatology. 73 

Before passing to Part Second it is in place to 
admit a brief of personal experience bearing upon 
certain points under present discussion, and from 
a conservative quarter and standpoint that entitle 
it to thoughtful consideration. It is in the shape 
of an autographic addendum to an article that ap- 
peared in the January number of the Baptist 
Quarterly Review of 1890, by Eev. Dr. Henry E. 
Bobins, entitled " A Eestatement in Theology.'' 

At its close the author says we are permitted to 
give the experience of one who was delivered from 
the paralysis of the subtile skepticism of which we 
have been speaking, by a series of striking reflec- 
tions which came to him in the form of a waking 
vision. 

I had, he says, long pondered the fate of the un- 
evangelized millions of heathen lands who have 
passed from earth without a knowledge of the gos- 
pel of salvation by Christ. I read whatever 
could be found written upon it, and I struggled in 
my own thinking with the dreadful theme, until, 
utterly exhausted in mind and body, I could neither 
read nor think upon it any longer. 

Turning to lighter matters, I diverted my 
thoughts until I had regained physical strength 
and mental tone. But unable to resist the fascina- 
tion of the subject, I renewed the attempt to find 
some solution of a problem which, like a dense 
cloud, shut me in. I seemed to myself like one 
imprisoned in a dungeon, against whose unyielding 
walls of massive stone I threw myself in a passion 
to escape from my limitations, only to be hurled 
back violently within the bounds which I could 
not pass. 

Faint and helpless, I would wait till strength re- 
turned, and then springing up in a frenzy, I dashed 
myself against the relentless walls, only to be 



74 THE author's eschatology. 

thrown back again, baffled as before. Years 
passed, during which the apparently unending 
struggle went on. Suddenly, one day, while ab- 
sorbed in thought, I seemed to hear distinctly a 
voice, stern and terrible, as if God Himself were 
summoning me to answer. So vivid and over- 
powering was the impression that my heart almost 
ceased to beat, and my whole frame trembled con- 
vulsively. 

I listened with indescribable awe for the ex- 
pected interrogation. At last a question which 
seemed to penetrate to the very core of my being 
fell upon my ear. 'You have been greatly concerned 
to vindicate the justice of God in the administra- 
tion of His government over men!' said that 
mysterious voice. Yes, I answered, trembling and 
ashamed. 'Whence, then, came your sense of jus- 
tice! Did you originate it! Must it not be in you as 
a dim reflection from the everburning light of 
justice in Me from whom it came V 

In faltering accents I answered it must be so. 
'Can you not, then, 7 said that voice, in a tone of 
searching severity, ' leave to Me the vindication of 
My own attributes! 7 I sought to shrink away 
from the burning scrutiny of a Being whom I could 
not see, but whose awful presence seemed to shut 
me in on every side. 

In the intolerable silence that followed, I waited, 
yet dreaded, to hear another question. It came in 
the form of a direct charge, in a tone more gentle, 
and yet more fearful, because reproachful : 'You 
have been concerned to vindicate the piety of God. 
You have said that you would rather burn in hell 
with the lost than to accept grace not bestowed 
upon all.' 

To hear a bitter, rebellious sentiment which had 
found utterance only in the secrecy of my own heart, 



THE AUTHOR'S ESCHATOLOGY. 75 

thus charged upon me as something heard and re- 
membered by the omniscient Judge, made my flesh 
creep with horror. Yes, I answered, abashed and 
self-condemned. 

1 And have you, then,' continued that voice, 're- 
fused to receive the grace of My daily providence 
in numberless gifts by which your lot has been dis- 
tinguished from that of thousands of your fellow- 
creatures ! Have you, renouncing these, assumed 
your place in voluntary self-sacrifice with the de- 
praved, the outcasts from human society, as their 
helper and friend ? Xo ! you have not ! Then are 
you not, by your own confession, false ! Pretend- 
ing to a pity which is yours ODly as an unfruitful 
sentiment, and not as a principle of action V 

Speechless, convicted of heartless insincerity, I 
bent down my head, accepting the indignation 
which I felt that I had myself kindled, burning 
fiercely against me. The oppressive silence that 
followed the first question succeeded this arraign- 
ment also, during which time the new revelation 
of my real spiritual attitude toward God burned 
like a flame of fire through every chamber of my 
soul. I was thoroughly humbled, the sinews of 
my strength for contending with the Almighty and 
omniscient One had been touched by Him, and 
were shrivelled by the touch. 

Then, again, that voice came, in a tone wherein 
majesty and severity were blended into a myste- 
rious and thrilling harmony, urging upon me this 
admonition, which has seemed to be sounding in 
my heart ever since : { You have been concerned 
for the justification of the justice and pity of God — 
be it yours henceforth to be yourself just and piti- 
ful, and be sure that both the justice and pity of 
God will be fully vindicated before all intelligences 
in His dealings with all moral beings.' 



76 THE AUTHOR'S eschatology. 

Since that memorable hour for which I shall 
never cease to be grateful, no question about the 
fate of the heathen has troubled me, save the ques- 
tion whether I myself am just and pitiful and faith- 
ful in my relations to them. God has seen fit to 
make His purpose of redeeming the human race, 
of building up character into Christ-likeness, of 
establishing the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, 
and renovating human society, all dependent upon 
the co-operation of the Church in extending the 
knowledge of the gospel of His Son. 

This great trust of the gospel of the Son of God, 
therefore, with all its priceless blessings, carries 
with it a responsibility so great that the manner of 
meeting it must be to all thoughtful persons a mat- 
ter of the gravest concern. For it is a revealed 
principle of the divine government that God be- 
stows His gifts upon individuals and nations, not 
primarily as an expression and proof of His dis- 
tinguishing regard for those who are thus the re- 
cipients of His benefits. 

Eather is it true that God's gifts to individuals 
reveal their innermost value only to those who 
share those gifts with others. So far as any pos- 
sess peculiar blessings, God has ordained that in 
order to the discovery of their great worth, the re- 
ceivers thereof, just to the extent of their own pos- 
sessions, shall hold themselves stewards of His 
manifold grace, debtors to all men. 

Whenever this primary purpose of divine grace 
is lost sight of, and God's gifts are selfishly appro- 
priated, communion with Him becomes less and 
less possible, — for what concord has selfishness 
with self-imparting love ? The mind becomes 
darkened, the heart hardened, and the individual 
or nation ripens for the divine judgment. 



THE AUTHOR'S ESCHATOLOGY. 7? 

So the Jewish people, forgetting that the grace 
whereby they were signally exalted above others 
was given to thein in order that His way might be 
known upon earth , His saving health among all 
nations, shut up their bowels of compassion to the 
blinded Gentiles. Unmindful that God's revelation 
of grace to them was in order that they might be a 
channel through which that grace might flow to all 
the world — exclusive in spirit, haughty in a sense of 
their superiority as the special favorites of Heaven, 
— they became utterly oblivious to the manifestation 
of His grace to all mankind in Jesus Christ, rejected 
Him because He did not minister to their national 
pride and selfishness, and at last were overtaken 
by an utter and bitter overthrow — God's indig- 
nant protest against the spirit that consumes upon 
its own lusts the bounties of His gracious provi- 
dence, and the richer blessings of His redemption 
through Jesus Christ! 

Let us, then, who are put in trust with the 
treasures of nineteen Christian centuries, and "upon 
whom the ends of the world are come" (I. Cor. 
10:11), not forget our obligations. Let us remem- 
ber that God, since men are men, cannot work to 
the great end of redemption independently of His 
people ; and that, therefore, He has commanded 
them to carry His saving truth to every creature. 

The expectant nations in their desperate desti- 
tution cry aloud for the message of grace. The 
Apostolic challenge and questions echo and re- 
echo in the ears of a hesitating and dilatory 
Church. "How, then, shall they call on Him in 
whom they have not believed ? And how shall 
they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? 
And how shall they hear without a preacher % And 
how shall they preach except they be sent? ' ' (Eom. 
10:14.) Surely the question for us to answer, as 



78 . THE AUTHOR'S ESCHATOLOGYc 

Mr. Spurgeon is reported to have suggested, is not, 
Can the heathen be saved without the gospel? 
but, Can we be saved if we do not give the gospel 
to the heathen ? 



PART THE SECOND. 



The New Eschatology Explained, 

Its Principles Defended. 

Inferences Derived. 



In that day the Theologia Elenctica, after having 
performed a most important temporary service, will be 
dispensed with. Its technology will fall into desuetude, 
because, formed as it was for the special object of 
neutralizing the heresies which will then no longer 
exist, its employment will be uncalled for. God's own 
truth, expressed in God's own language, will form the 
universal creed of intelligent and harmonized and happy 
Christendom. Men's faith and their affections, when 
this intermediate and temporary apparatus is at length 
taken down, will come into more direct contact with 
Heaven's original revelation ; and the spirit of good 
will to man which prompted Heaven's message will be 
felt in all its freshness and power, when the uproar of 
controversy is stilled, and its harsh and jarring discords 
have died away into everlasting silence. — Thomas 
Chalmers. 



PART THE SECOND. 



THE NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 



SECTION FIRST. 

In what has gone before, it will be perceived 
that we have been restricted to a review of the 
position and principles of our author, to a consid- 
eration of his honorable relation to and release 
from the Presbyterian Church, to a development 
of his views of the resurrection both of the just 
and of the unjust, and to a virtual answer to the 
inquiries with which we opened. 

Those inquiries were, Is resurrection to be 
redemptive ? Or is it punitive ? Or can it be at 
once redemptive and corrective, while punitive 
and penal ! Is, or is not, resurrection for all the 
human race the assured result of Christ's personal 
recovery from and victory over death, as the 
Head of humanity, the sinless Second Adam, the 
First-born of the dead, the Beginner and Assurer 
of the Divine Order and Dispensation of Eternal 
Life ? Is resurrection an essential part of the re- 
demption that is in Christ Jesus, belonging to the 



82 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

times of restitution of all things, whereof God has 
spoken by the mouth of His holy prophets which 
have been since the world began ? Is there to be 
re- investiture with life, manhood and all its re- 
sponsibilities to all that now abide in the myste- 
rious realm of the dead 1 Is living again in the 
sense of recovery from death a law of humanity, 
and a boon for all mankind, through the redemption 
that is in Christ ? And finally, do Scripture and 
reason warrant the belief that such a personal 
resurrection for every member of the human family 
is a process essentially redemptive and benignant? 

The Logical Basis of Eevision and the New 
Theology. 

It now remains to show that, not only the Pres- 
byterian Eevision, but the so-called New-Theology 
movement must make good its raison d'etre by 
finding a basis for itself, and for related truths in 
theology, psychology and the constitution of man 
and of the universe, not less than in the Holy 
Scriptures. Nor can any man be justified in as- 
sailing a long accepted doctrine of historic Chris- 
tianity unless he is able to give good reasons for 
so doing, and to show that the dogma impeached 
forms no part of the true Christian faith. 

In order to a complete digest of our author's 
views, there must, therefore, be an eclectic survey 
of his latest thought and reasonings in Words of 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 83 

Reconciliation. The material for this is furnished 
by recent numbers that still 

" Fit audience find though few.' 

It is the judgment of those who have followed 
our author, that he has not yet indulged in unwar- 
ranted speculation, nor has he tried to " know the 
times or the seasons which the Father has put in 
His own power." Nor has he lawlessly pried into 
u the secret things that belong unto the Lord our 
God." But he holds that " those things which are 
revealed belong to us and to our children forever, 
that we may do all the words of this law " ( Deut. 
29:29). 

He has not illicitly tried, if we may innocently 
appropriate the melody of Milton, to unsphere 

11 The spirit of Plato, and unfold 
What worlds or what vast regions* hold 
The immortal mind that hath forsook 
Her dwelling in this fleshly nook." 

*The doctrine of an all-pervasive ether dispels the 
old notion in physics that two substances cannot occupy 
the same space at the same time. There is, then, 
nothing unscientific in the view that in, with, and under 
the universe of matter there may be a universe of 
spirit, and that the world of humanity is the outward 
vesture of a world of spiritual being. 

The grasp of the human understanding expands every 
day. It is only a few years since Humboldt conceived 
the mighty truth that Cosmos — the universal organiza- 
tion of things — was one system, however many universes 



84 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

But he fta^dcvoutly sought to obtain the mind of 
the Spirit in respect to the ways of God with man, 
and to pierce the future of the human race by the 
light of Scripture and the revealing thereof by the 
Holy Spirit in answer to prayer. 

His apology for seeking to undermine the long- 
prevalent belief of the Church in the immortal ex- 
istence of wicked men, as such, and their eternal 
torment in hell, and to supplant this dogma by 
another more Scriptural and rational faith, is pre- 
sented by our author in these reasons : 

1. The dogma of the eternal existence and tor- 
ment of the wicked in hell has been already virtually 
undermined. There is a general revolt against it 
in-the reason and consciousness of enlightened Bible 
Christians. This is proved, not so much by what 
they say, for the sentiment of tradition and the re- 
straints of institutionalism are still very strong, but 

it may contain, each atom in it depending upon and 
having relation to all of the others. Next came 
Lamarck, who showed that all animals are kin. Then 
followed the great inventor of the spectroscope, who 
proved that all the stars are composed of the same 
materials as those which make up the earth. Finally 
came the discoverers who learned that the invisible 
powers of nature— heat, light, sound, electricity, mag- 
netism, etc. — are all forms of motion. All these prop- 
ositions seem to have been demonstrated. What the 
most advanced scientists are striving now to prove is 
that mind and matter are one and the same. That 
proposition represents the highest intellectual effort of 
the age. 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 85 

in the fact that there is scarcely a minister who 
preaches, or a private Christian who acts, as if he 
really believed that the mass of his fellow-men 
around him were standing on the edge of such an 
eternal perdition. 

2. The doctrine is inconsistent not only with a 
true knowledge of God, but with the specific 
promises of universal blessing which underlie the 
divine economy as revealed in the Bible. We are 
there met by the record of man's lapse into sin, 
whose wages are death, and by a divine provision 
to redeem the race from sin and death — a provision 
so ample that u all the kindreds of the earth " and 
"all generations' 7 were to be reached and blessed 
by it. The ]Sew Testament answer to these 
abundant Old Testament promises is, " For as in 
Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made 
alive," and as sin hath reigned unto death, much 
more hath grace abounded in the rescue of man 
from sin and its necessary sequence of death. 

3. This dogma, therefore, especially runs 
counter to the primary hope of the older Scriptures 
— " a hope that is brought to full view in the light 
of the gospel of Christ — and which is a hope in 
1 God who quickeneth the dead.' ' ; " The dead " 
are those who have gone down to Sheol and are 
captives there under the just judgment of God 
against sin. The promise to raise the dead is the 
fundamental hope of the Bible, and the fact of such 
a resurrection gives to the gospel all its hope, 
vitality and grace. 



86 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

By a strange subversion of this gospel, certain 
passages in the New Testament, such as Mark 
9:43-49, and Matthew 25:31-46, which describe the 
punishment in hell to which wicked men are now 
exposed, and which relate to the destruction of 
their existing personalities as developed in sin 
under this present world-system, are treated as if 
they described a punishment awaiting them in the 
far distant future after resurrection. For this there 
is no warrant in the passages themselves ; and this 
view of them not only robs the provision for their 
resurrection of all its gospel — but converts it into 
unspeakable calamity, an infinite curse. 

The discovery that resurrection is always and 
essentially a redemptive act was the first thing 
which compelled to a change of views upon this 
subject, and set us about our present task of urging 
upon the Church the necessity of recasting and re- 
adjusting her whole scheme of Eschatology, in a 
way that should no longer deny this first principle 
of the doctrine of Christ and this primary hope of 
His gospel. 

4. We found also, as soon as this principle was 
grasped, it furnished the key to the right under- 
standing of all Scripture, and especially of its 
prophecies and promises. All its teaching about 
retribution is explained by the hell of misery which 
now begirts sinful men, and the hell of destruction 
which awaits them beyond death, from which 
resurrection brings no release until they have paid 
the utmost farthing. Moreover resurrection itself, 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 87 

as to time and order and character, must proceed 
according to the harvest law of all life — " Every 
man in his own order " and u To every seed his 
own body.' J The u resurrection of life" and in 
u the image of the Heavenly ?? is for those only 
" who have done good/' while " those that have 
done ill " must come forth to another process of 
judgment under the yoke of this earthy manhood — 
a condition of existence which gives scope for every 
variety of chastisement and of discipline according 
to desert. 

5. This principle of redemptive resurrection 
accounts for certain dominant ideas that have 
always found place in the religious faith of man- 
kind. For instance, the wide spread belief in re- 
incarnation is an adumbration of the truth that im- 
perfectly developed souls are accorded another op- 
portunity in life through their reinstatement in 
earthly manhood ; and that it is through a process 
of repeated judgment in the flesh that men are 
taught to live unto God in the spirit ; while the 
principle of karma* is seen to be a reflection of the 

* Karma, the doctrine of fate, destiny or necessity, as 
an invariable sequence of cause and effect ; the theory 
of inevitable consequence. 

"The Buddhist theory of karma, — which controls the 
destiny of all sentient beings, not by judicial reward 
and punishment, but by the inflexible result of cause 
into effect, wherein the present is ever determined by 
the past in an unbroken line of causation, — is one of the 
most remarkable developments of ethical speculation." 

E. B. Tylor, Prim. Culture. 



88 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

principle of " the resurrection of judgment," which 
requires that embodiment shall always correspond to 
character, and that every one must receive in body 
according to that he hath done, whether it be good 
or bad. Moreover, through the triumph of the 
spirit over the flesh, it is seen that the soul obtains 
eternal rest from this conflict, and enters — not into 
a Nirvana of impersonal existence, but into a 
Heaven of personal union with God, by which man 
is made the heir of His estate and the executive of 
His everlasting kingdom. 

6. It accords also with the scientific doctrine of 
evolution, and with its law of progress by which 
the ideal in every form of life pursues its path 
through successive stages to realization in a finally 
perfected form. It shows, too, how remorselessly 
everything imperfect must be rejected and elimi- 
nated, and that only the fittest survives. But be- 
yond this it also shows that love is at the bottom 
of even this law, for the fittest who survive be» 
come the elect seed, in whom recovery and blessing 
are treasured up for the less fit of its kindred who 
failed to reach the goal. 

7. In this way the Bible teaching about the 
solidarity of the race, and the connection in life 
and destiny between the successive generations of 
mankind and between the living and the dead, is 
accounted for. The dead are treasured up for re- 
covery and are repeated in the living, until the 
living reach the plane of spiritual and eternal life 
which is the gift of God to men through Jesus 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 89 

Christ our Lord. Then they attain to the true and 
complete resurrection from the dead and nevermore 
come under the yoke of bondage to the creature or 
to death. And in this victory they obtain power 
as kings and priests unto God to help and to liber- 
ate their brethren who are still bound and in prison 
under this yoke. 

8. All the Scripture teaching about the destruc- 
tion of the wicked, which has led many of its de- 
vout students to believe in their final and irre- 
trievable extinction, is explained under this princi- 
ple, without the necessity of believing that the 
Godlike element in man can perish, or that the 
resurrection provided for him has no more worthy 
end than as a prelude to a second and an eternal 
death. It is seen that the only form of personal 
manhood that can attain to immortality is that 
in which Christ is formed and to which He gives 
power to become the son of God. 

Personal continuity of being depends, therefore, 
upon the degree in which the divine nature in man 
has appropriated to itself His personal character- 
istics. These may have been so refractory and 
vile as to be wholly rejected. In this case the man 
" loses himself and is cast away." But the divine 
nature in him survives to take on another human 
personality, and to pursue its path toward perfect 
personal expression in the image of God. This is 
the meaning of resurrection, whether in its lower 
iorni of re-embodiment in the flesh, or in its true 
and final form of glorification in the image of 
Christ. 



90 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

But it is apparent how, in this process, the carnal 
man becomes utterly extinct, and how even the 
personality with which he was identified must 
perish with him ; for the true and permanent in- 
dividuality of man resides only in that element of 
his being which is divine. Man, as possessing 
spirit, is, and cannot be destroyed. Man, as the 
expression of spirit, that is, as person, exists; as 
such he may perish. 

9. We are satisfied, therefore, that we did not 
abandon the old dogma of eternal punishment 
without convincing proof that it introduced into 
the Christian system an appalling perversion of its 
message of grace and life to men, and until we had 
found in Scripture a substitute true to the essen- 
tial facts of divine retribution, as witnessed alike 
in the works and in the Word of God ; and one, 
too, which, instead of relaxing the efforts of the 
Church to save men, or lowering the dignity of her 
calling, furnishes her with far higher motives to 
fidelity and self-sacrifice in the fulfillment of her 
mission. For no other doctrine makes the salva- 
tion of the world, both of the living and the dead, 
so absolutely dependent upon her companionship 
with Christ in His love and suffering sacrifice for 
its redemption. For even the dead cannot be led 
captive out of their captivity, except as living 
saints, like Paul, they come to " know Him and 
the power of His resurrection and the fellowship 
of His sufferings," and so drink of His cup and 
are baptized with His baptism in behalf of the 
dead ( Phil. 3:10-11 ; I. Cor. 15:29-32 ). 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 91 

10. In John 5:29, we have a passage which di- 
rectly connects resurrection with judgment — " they 
that have done evil unto the resurrection of judg- 
ment." This text, however, does not imply that 
men have not been judged before, and that they are 
now raised directly for this purpose. On the con- 
trary, we are plainly instructed that the judgment 
of the world by the Son of Man is a continuous 
process, beginning with His exaltation (vs. 21-30 ; 
12:31; Acts 2:32-36). The resurrection of judg- 
ment is not a resurrection unto judgment, but a 
restoration of the unjust to embodied life under 
those conditions which bring them again under 
judgment. They must again be brought under 
bondage to the creature, and, as we believe, into 
the state of earthly and fleshly manhood, for these 
are the appointed conditions for human trial and 
judgment from the beginning. 

Their resurrection is a revival to a state of judg- 
ment. There is but one form of manhood that is 
freed from these conditions, and that is "the 
Heavenly." Scripture knows nothing of any other 
form of manhood but u the earthly." Therefore, 
the unjust must be put back into this order of life 
and be held still under judgment. Hence their 
resurrection is so defined, as one " of judgment." 
All this accords with our fundamental maxim that 
it is here on the earth and in the flesh that men 
are tried and disciplined for the life that is spiritual 
and eternal. There is but one form of immortal 
life that is possible to man, and that is the likeness 



92 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

of Christ. And until men are prepared for that, 
they must remain captives to death, or, if raised, 
must come again under the yoke of bondage to the 
creature with its discipline of suffering and of 
chastisement. 

11. There remains but one passage which still 
confronts our view that it is u in the flesh " that 
God has appointed to men their judgment for sin. 
In Eevelations 20:11-15, we have what appears to 
be a vision of a final judgment, of which "the dead" 
are specifically the subjects, and as the result of 
which the wicked are cast into the lake of fire. 

Even if we could not accommodate this passage to 
what we have found to be the current teaching of 
Scripture on this subject, we could still rightfully 
claim that a dark passage, in what is confessedly 
the most enigmatical book in the Bible, cannot be 
suffered to set aside its plainer teachings. But 
even here the difficulty disappears when we regard 
the judgment depicted as a judgment of the souls 
of the dead to determine the order and nature of 
their resurrection. It is a judgment now going on. 
A class of i ' souls ? ? are found to be " written in 
the book of life." They rise to live and reign 
with Christ. A class are not found written there. 
They are adjudged to destruction in the lake of 
fire. In the language of Jesus, these souls are 
"lost." They "lose themselves and are cast 
away." 

The agency of this destruction is that consuming 
fire of God which must burn up all that is evil in 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 03 

man, even to the destruction of the evil personality 
in which he is known to himself. But this cannot 
include the indestructible spirit of man, nor ex- 
clude the divine process for his recovery through 
the investment of his spirit with another person- 
ality. The death of the souls judged is here called 
" the second death. " The personalty of man is 
not completely gone until that death is inflicted. 

Hence re incarnation, or whatever be the mode 
of recovery, takes place after this destruction in 
u the lake of fire." The personality is gone, but 
the spirit is again personalized through another in- 
carnation, which is resurrection indeed, but only 
one " of judgment." 

12. From this point of view it is seen that the 
only gospel which can reach " spirits in prison" 
is a hope of resurrection, and that this "gospel 
was preached even to them that are dead, that they 
might be judged according to men in the flesh, but 
live according to God in the spirit " ( I. Pet. 3:19; 
4:6), and that in this way our Lord is "Judge both 
of the quick and the dead." The meaning of this 
title becomes apparent. He judges the living 
through the discipline and trials of this earthly 
state 5 He judges the dead as to the time, the order, 
the character of their recovery to life through 
resurrection. The " saints" He adjudges to ever- 
lasting life. The "just" come forth to "the 
resurrection of life," while the unjust undergo a 
more complete destruction in death, and in their 
resurrection are held under bondage to the flesh 



$4 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

ior further judgment. And if a principle of re-in- 
carnation be admitted as explaining the method of 
this kind of resurrection, it will be seen that the 
judgment of the living and the dead is but two 
sides of one divine process. For the dead are re- 
peated in the living and the living are inclusive of 
the dead. 

They are united in the one organism of the race. 
The living are suffering for the sins of the dead, 
and the dead are finding their way back to life and 
liberty through the living who overcome in this 
life-conflict. And so the Old Testament promises 
of blessing to past generations through the genera- 
tions that are to come, are verified. And the 
representation of all Scripture, that c i men in the 
flesh " are the special subjects of judgment in that 
divine economy under which the human race is be- 
ing trained for sonship to God and for immortality, 
is explained, and harmonized with the facts both 
of science and of human experience. 



THE NEW ESCHATOLOGY. 



SECTION SECOND. 
Questionings as to the How and When of 

THE BeSURRECTION OF JUDGMENT. 

When once the principle is admitted that resur- 
rection is redemptive and that it provides for 
another opportunity of life, then we turn naturally 
to the question of how and when. To the mind of 
our author, the weight of Scripture evidence is in 
favor of the view that those not fit for the resur- 
rection of life, " the unjust,' 7 are to be returned 
for a period, by the u resurrection of judgment, ?? to 
the bondage and discipline of an earthly state, 
not necessarily material, but spiritual. 

This view may be startling, not to say offensive, 
to some, but science and the study of the religious 
history of our race, together with certain obscure 
yet significant hints in the Holy Scriptures, would 
seem to be rapidly preparing for it. The belief in 
an eternal hell with the devil and his angels, 
whose terrors, wielded by the Apostate Church of 
Eome through the dismal night of the Middle Ages, 

" When crown and crosier ruled a coward world," 



96 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

and sufficed so long to keep that world in awe, is 
-rapidly giving way to a better understanding of the 
divine wisdom and goodness in the government of 
God and the destiny of man. 

In the fifth volume of Words of Reconciliation, 
in an article upon " Theological Progress/' Mr. 
Baker says : Since this work began, we are con- 
scious of having reached a clearer apprehension of 
the truth upon the points to which we have given 
special attention, and at some points to have made 
a positive advance. We have Bible authority for 
the statement that all our knowledge of the truth 
is yet but partial. " For now we know in part, 
and we prophesy in part' 7 (I. Cor. 13:9). "If 
any man think he knoweth anything, he knoweth 
nothing yet as he ought to know" ( I. Cor. 8:2 ). 

St. Paul seems in these passages to disclaim for 
himself final and absolute knowledge of the things 
upon which he prophesied. We may well, there- 
fore, hold ourselves open to that fuller light and 
instruction which are promised to those who 
humbly seek it. We know not what great things 
God may be preparing to make known to men in 
these last days. We only know that all the treas- 
ures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ, 
to be hereafter revealed with Him. 

Our place, therefore, is cautiously and reverently 
to watch along all paths the signs of His appear- 
ing. The interest we have in unfolding truth is 
based upon the conviction that all true discovery 
is so much gain in the knowledge of God ; and it 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 97 

is by such increase that the Church is to be brought 
out of her present state of confusion and weakness 
into that unity of faith and of knowledge which 
shall make her a fit vehicle for the presence and 
glory of the Lord, with which the earth is yet to 
be filled. 

It is our profound conviction that the most 
pressing need of the Church at this day is a new, a 
wider, a more rational and Scriptural view of God's 
dealings with mankind than has prevailed hitherto. 
To make this manifest, and to induce in others by 
reflection the same profound conviction is, we are 
persuaded, the highest service we can render to 
the Church and to the world at large. Xor is it 
too much to say that we believe the end to be in 
sight, and that diverging and discordant lines of 
thought on this subject are soon to unite and con- 
cur into one.* 



* The writer firmly believes that Mr. Baker is on the 
right trend, and, therefore, confesses to a strong desire 
to see his views presented in a fair and candid light. 
He is quite willing if only to ring a bell or carry a single 
torch in the procession of truth. But in giving this re- 
view to the public the editor is not to be considered as 
fully endorsing all the shades of thought expressed, but 
only as furnishing a chapter to the history of opinions, or 
a glance at that " Theology of the future " to which the 
German Dr. Doerner referred when he said, a few years 
since, " that America would yet have a theology of its 
own that would probably be in advance of that of 
Europe." 



98 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

The predominant modes of thought in Christen- 
dom have been three. 

1. The majority of Christian believers have 
long held that the teachings of Scripture require 
us to believe, first, that man is of an immortal 
nature ; and second, that if he fail of salvation 
through faith in Christ in this present stage of 
earthly life, there remains for him beyond the 
grave naught but endless misery and despair. 

2. A school of thought, small in the early cen- 
turies, but rapidly growing in later times, denies 
the first of these propositions, that man is of an 
immortal nature, and teaches, first, that man has 
no inherent eternal life in himself, nor any potency 
of endless existence, except he become a partaker 
of the divine nature through union with Christ ; 
and second, this school teaches that the end of all 
who are not saved in this life is extinction or de- 
struction, either — as one wing maintains — at the 
first death with no resurrection ; or, as the larger 
portion teach, at il the second death, " after resur- 
rection and final judgment. 

3. A small but increasing section of the Church 
has always held that man, as made in the image of 
God, is truly the Father's child of an immortal 
nature, and that every one of His children, by 
however long and painful a road, must at last be 
brought home to Himself. 

Scripture is freely quoted in support of each of 
these forms of belief, and each has unquestioned 
elements of truth. But the new eclectic Escha- 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 99 

tology combines whatever is true in each of these 
systems and rejects what is false. It concedes to 
the first and third, that man is of an immortal 
nature, in that the root and ground of his being are 
in God, so that this nature must finally develop 
into its ideal of an image of God, which is the true 
and primal idea of man. It affirms, however, that 
in its passage toward the ideal man it may take on 
personal forms of being which are transient and 
perishable. 

The new Eschatology holds, therefore, with the 
second of the above systems, that the man who 
lives only in the natural sphere is mortal, and that 
his end is destruction. It holds that this destruc- 
tion is so radical as to include even the personality 
of a man who is so steeped and sunk in sin that the 
qualities of his diviner nature remain undeveloped. 
And the man in that form or character of manhood 
must be destroyed. There is no other basis for 
personal continuity of being in man but the divine 
nature, which is eternal. So far as that nature 
pervades and transforms these present personal 
lives which we live in the flesh, so far we can carry 
on, into the life to come, personal traits and en- 
dowments. 

Here, then, we have a doctrine of Eschatology 
which concedes to orthodoxy that the incorrigible 
sinner must suffer an eternal deprivation of good 
equivalent to an eternal punishment, and yet re- 
jects the revolting dogma of an endless conscious 



100 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

torment. We have also a doctrine that concedes 
to conditionalism the truth of its position, that 
there is no immortal life for man apart from God, 
that there can be no personal continuity of being 
on any other basis, and that the personal existence 
of the wicked must come to an end. But it denies 
that this requires the blotting out of that divine 
ideal manhood which lies at the root of being, and 
becomes specialized in the creation of each indi- 
vidual man. 

This view also concedes to universalism that 
each possessor of the divine-human nature must 
finally reach the goal of his being, but it affirms 
that this nature cannot carry on with it to that 
goal any form of personal manhood that unfits for 
its high uses and destiny. The individual being 
of every man is immortal because its ground work 
is divine, but his special form ol personal existence 
can be immortalized only as it becomes a true ex- 
pression of his inmost being, and so a worthy 
dwelling place for the Spirit of God. Such a doc- 
trine comprehends the various sides of Scripture 
truth on this momentous subject, and it makes 
room for every kind of Scripture appeal to the 
minds and consciences of men, whether drawn 
from the terrors of the law or the persuasive 
motives of the gospel. The doctrine we advocate 
reconciles and combines in one the chief points of 
excellence in the various theories on the subject of 
future punishment. 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 101 

1. It accepts from universalism its doctrine 
of a divine nature in man, and of the impossi- 
bility of the loss or extinction of being. 

2. It accepts from orthodoxy its doctrine that 
only those in whom Christ is formed can see God, 
and that every form of manhood that is evil must 
be cast into the fire. 

3. It borrows from the conditionalists their 
view that no form of personal manhood can be im- 
mortal but such as becomes a fit habitation for 
God. It, therefore, denies with them the possi- 
bility of the endless existence in misery of wicked 
men : " Whose end is affirmed to be destruction " 
(Phil. 3:19). 

4. It derives from St. Paul, and also from the 
true philosophy of human nature, the doctrine that 
there is a two-fold self in man. There is the true 
ego which resides in his immortal and divine 
nature. There is a surface consciousness which 
builds up in him another self, related to the external 
world, from which he derives most of his experi- 
ences and sensations. Living in this sphere he 
develops a personality suited to it, and which is 
"of the world. » 

5. What must be destroyed in God's consuming 
fire is his personality, so far as the truer self, the 
diviner nature, has not penetrated and sanctified 
it. It is a life-endowment whose treasures must 
all be left behind, except as these treasures have 
been " laid up in heaven." 



102 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

6. From this point of view we can see how a 
man can be both destroyed and saved, lost and 
found, dead and made alive again. We can see 
how in his existing form of personal being he may 
be consumed in fire which cannot be quenched, 
and how in another he may be "saved so as by 
fire. 7 - All is explained by the doctrine of a two- 
fold personality in the one individual, and by the 
principle that personal continuity of being, surviv- 
ing death, inheres alone in the divine nature of 
man, and that, therefore, he recovers self-conscious- 
ness and the treasures of his present life only as 
he has developed those elements of character which 
are divine, and as that life has been pervaded by 
the Spirit of God making him a new creature in 
Christ Jesus. 

In the epistle to the Colossians ( 1:25-27 ), Paul 
speaks of the mystery u hidden from the ages and 
the generations," " but now made manifest to the 
saints," which he defines as " Christ in you, the 
hope of glory." 

The Hidden Mystery. 

This fact of Christ in us, as both the cause and 
the method of our salvation, was one of the primary 
truths taught to the disciples, and which the 
Saviour especially prayed that His Father would 
make real to them and in them. 

He told them that the Comforter, whom He was 
to send to them from the Father, would especially 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 103 

reveal to them this fact: "I am in my Father, 
and ye in me and I in you." And His final prayer 
for them was that " they all may be one as Thou 
Father art in me and I in Thee, that they also may 
be one in us." 

The knowledge that Christ lived in him was the 
inspiration of Paul's life, his strength for service, 
his defense against enemies, human and devilish, 
his support under trial, his buoyant hope in every 
night of adversity, his victory over death. It was 
in him a new power of life as well as the hope of 
glory. One of the most conspicuous proofs of this 
power of Christ in him was the way in which he 
was enabled to triumph over bodily infirmities, to 
endure incredible hardships, and to show such 
prodigious industry in planning and toiling for the 
Kingdom of Heaven. 

The Consciousness of God. 

As beings made in the image of God we have the 
germ of this consciousness within us. But it was 
not until Christ came that this God-consciousness 
found its supreme and rightful expression in 
humanity. God was manifest in the flesh. Human 
nature reached in Him its divine ideal as the image 
of the Invisible — the Son and heir of God — and 
was enthroned at His right hand as the Quickener 
and Source of this divine humanity in us. And we 
get the power to be and to act as sons through be- 
lieving on Him as thus raising up and sustaining in 
us the consciousness that we are one with God, and 



104 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

one with Him in that divine human nature in which 
God has chosen to dwell and to act. 

It is impossible for the Christian to make any 
progress in working out his own salvation, or to 
do any effective work for the Church or for his 
fellowmen, except as this hidden mystery becomes 
revealed to his own consciousness and becomes 
operative and energetic to control his life and con- 
duct. The cause of all the painful deficiencies in 
our Christian living and in the Church as a body, 
is that this long-hidden mystery becomes shrouded 
in us. We do not half believe it. We allow it to 
be smothered under a mass of worldly ideas, and a 
load of worldly cares, until its power becomes 
latent, aud we vainly strive to go on in the Chris- 
tian life in our merely human and natural energy ; 
imitating the fruits of the Spirit in works of the 
flesh ; worshiping with strange fire, and going 
through the round of Christian observances and 
duties in the energy of the old man ; covering up 
its weariness and disgust with a veil of hypocrisy, 
or perhaps giving up the effort as one for which 
we have no longer neither the ability nor the in- 
clination. 

The Sine Qua Non of Spiritual Progress. 

The one thing, therefore, we need to carry us 
through the daily trials and duties of the Christian 
life, to strengthen our bodies for the burden, and 
to brace up our spirits to the task until all Christian 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 105 

service shall be a pleasure, and even the necessary- 
afflictions and self-denials of the Christian life shall 
be cheerfully borne, is that we suffer not this con- 
sciousness of union with God, and of our divine 
sonship to grow dim within us. This is the bed- 
rock of our faith and of our standing in Christ. 
We must keep our feet upon it as for our life. 

This Christ-nature in us is always spoken of as 
a, growth. It is first " begotten, " then " formed ?? 
in us. It first dominates our spirits, then it con- 
trols our bodies, until their members become its 
willing instruments and the whole organism its 
temple. Nothing but this consciousness that we 
are Christly men, with divine power, and all the 
capacities of a divine nature latent in us, can ever 
give us confidence and success in the Christian 
life. But with this all things become possible. 

The greatest want in our lives, therefore, the 
greatest need of the Church and of the world, is 
that this mystery shall be made manifest in us and 
to all men, until, no longer hidden and pent up, it 
becomes a mighty, transforming energy that shall 
subdue all things in us and in the world unto itself. 

The Secret of Permanent Happiness. 

The human race is to attain its final blessedness 
through the revelation to it of this knowledge of 
God. Mankind is now in ignorance of God ; 
hence its sin and misery. God made man with the 
capacity and desire for this knowledge, and by it 



106 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

lie was to attain to eternal life. But before he 
could reach this high goal, the Creator suffered 
him to pursue this knowledge along self-chosen 
paths. He has been allowed to satisfy himself 
with things of sense, in order that he might learn 
that God was his only portion, and to taste the 
bitterness of death, in order that he might learn 
that God is his only true and abiding life. 

The root and ground of his being are in God. He 
is, therefore, of an immortal essence. This core of 
his being is his true and inmost self, and it cannot 
die. But the personal form in which it seeks ex- 
pression may be unworthy of it, and, therefore, not 
abiding. The exterior man, the personality known 
to us, and which acquires a self consciousness of 
its own, insomuch that it becomes the character in 
which the man thinks of and knows himself, may 
die ; indeed, it must die, because it is only a false 
representation, a counterfeit expression of the 
man's true and hidden self. Of these two " Ps " 
the awakened soul becomes conscious, and aware 
that the one must die in order that the other may 
rise into life eternal. 

The Dual Nature of Man. 

Eeconciliation between the two theories of man's 
nature must, therefore, be sought in this distinc- 
tion between that in man which is individual and 
that which is personal. As made in the divine 
image and as being of a divine nature, he must 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 107 

finally reach the end of his creation and become in- 
dividualized as a son and heir of God. But in the 
passage to this high destiny he may take on per- 
sonal forms of being which are imperfect and 
transitory. The constant teaching of the Bible, 
that the end of the wicked is destruction, will, 
therefore, find its explanation in this inevitable 
destruction of those imperfect and perishable forms 
of being which are but the outward man within 
which his true being is encased. 

In that class of men called u the wicked, 7 ' this 
exterior man has so usurped and imprisoned the 
inward man, as to suppress its activities and aspir- 
ations and even its self-consciousness. A phantom 
self has displaced the true. Hence Jesus warns 
men that, in the inevitable destruction of this body 
of sin and death, they will be in danger of u losing 
themselves." We can well conceive it to be pos- 
sible that a man's personal self-consciousness may 
be so developed in the line of that which is temporal 
and evil that, when stripped and dissolved by 
death, the loss of this evil personality will carry 
with it the loss of self- consciousness. The man, 
in the character in which he was known even to 
himself, is destroyed. 

Man Therefore Mortal and Immortal. 

Now, as all men are born into the world under 
these conditions of bondage to that which is exter- 
nal and corruptible, it must be said of all men. 



108 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

that they are mortal. They die and return to dust, 
and even their thoughts perish. There can be no 
absolute extinction of their essential being, and 
no loss of its accumulated good, but that form of 
manhood in which this being sought personal ex- 
pression perishes. 

Here, then, we come abreast of certain important 
principles. These are that God is building up in 
man a temple in which He may dwell forever ; 
that man is not immortal in his own nature^ but be- 
comes so as he becomes a fit dwelling-place for God; 
that the process of salvation is a process of purga- 
tion from all the corruptible elements which have 
been temporarily wrought into this temple, or that 
may have been accessories in its construction. 

The further principle is brought to view that 
personal continuity of being is made dependent 
upon character. So far as there are wrought into the 
fabric of any human life the elements of truth and 
goodness and virtue, so far there is the basis of a 
personality that will survive the shock and change 
of death. They that have done good come forth 
unto the resurrection of life ; they that have done 
•evil have a resurrection also. The root of their be- 
ing cannot perish, but all of evil that has been 
grafted on to it and sought nourishment from it, 
will have been cast into the fire and burned. This 
is the resurrection of judgment. 

Now if there be any well-established principle of 
Scripture, it is that the ultimate end of resurrection 
is redemptive. As the wages of sin is death, res- 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 109 

urrection necessarily lies at the other pole of the 
divine dealing. Eesurrection can never be retrib- 
utive, although it may be attended with the retrib- 
utive excision from the stock of any human life of 
all its evil growth. It is just at this point that the 
traditional theology has long labored under a fatal 
mistake. It has falsely conceived of resurrection 
as bringing to the unjust a redoubled damnation. 
It has thus put a veil over the Old Testament 
teachings, and has obscured and perverted the 
first principles of the gospel of Christ, in the Xew. 
It was at this point that the writer, who was for 
a long time in the ministry of the Presbyterian 
Church, was compelled to break with the West- 
minster Confession, because this Standard makes 
the resurrection of the unjust to be a curse rather 
than a blessing. The fundamental promise of re- 
demption, that in a chosen seed all the families of 
the earth are to be blessed, is thus nullified by the 
exclusion of the unjust dead who constitute the 
major part of the " all," and by the denial that the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to be 
a Lord both of the dead and of the living," had any 
purpose of blessing toward this immense majority 
of the Christless dead. 

A Fundamental Fallacy. 

These principles reveal to us also the funda- 
mental fallacy upon which the long-received dogma 
of eternal punishment is based. The fallacy lies 



110 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

in the confounding of that indestructible self which 
lies at the root of man's being as derived from God 
with that evil personality which is ' ; yet of the 
world," because it has grown up in its environ- 
ment, and under bondage to corruption. This 
must be destroyed in God's consuming fire. 
But to suppose it capable of eternal existence in 
the torment of that fire, is to attribute to it the 
pre-eminence of God, " who only hath immor- 
tality" (I. Tim. 6:16). 

Men become immortal only as they become par- 
takers in, and habitations of, the divine nature. 
There is no possible form of eternal being but that 
which is of God. The problem of salvation, there- 
fore, is to build up man into that form of personal 
being in which he shall embody the life of God, and 
be His representative, with all the prerogatives of 
sovereignty and sonship, throughout His wide 
dominions. To conceive of any baser form of man- 
hood as immortal, is to misconceive the whole plan 
of creation and redemption. From the right point 
of view eternal torment, or the endless being of 
any class of creatures rebellious and at enmity 
with God, is inconceivable. He must " reconcile 
all things unto Himself and become all in all" 
(Col. 1:24). 

But in association with this dogma of eternal 
torment there has also grown up in the Church an 
erroneous view of the atonement. It is conceived 
of as a divine scheme for rescuing man from the 
awful penalty of an endless hell. Hence men have 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. Ill 

come to view it as a device by which they can es- 
cape the just consequences of their sins, notwith- 
standing that under the divine government no 
penalties are inflicted but such as the case demands, 
and such as are perfectly just and good. None, 
therefore, can be remitted. 



Difference Between Remission of Sins and 
Remission of Penalty. 

What is remitted are not penalties, but the sins 
which make penalty necessary. No man escapes 
the consequences of his sins except as he is enabled, 
through the life of Christ, operative in him, to put 
away his sins. The energy of that life will require 
that in the end the whole evil nature in man be 
surrendered to death. Even the Christian must 
pay down this wage of sin, and man's redemption 
consists in the fact that, in the energy of this 
Christ-life, he is brought safely through the crisis 
of death into the life eternal which lies beyond it. 

He is thus saved, not from sin's penalty, but 
through it ; not from judgment for sin, but through 
it and beyond it. And this shows how it is pos- 
sible that salvation may reach those who are not 
in this life reached and saved through the knowl- 
edge of Christ, whom to know aright is life eternal. 

The common mistake of those who hold to a 
theory of future probation is, that they locate it in 



112 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

some supposed intermediate state before the judg- 
ment. Whereas it is only after the sentence of 
death has been visited and judgment executed, that 
there is any room for the grace of God to again 
take up the case of lost man. It is for this reason 
that the advocates of eternal punishment or of an- 
nihilation find it so easy to defeat the future proba- 
tionist, from Scripture. The passages are so fre- 
quent and decisive in the assertion that judgment 
must follow upon the issues of this life, that no 
ground is left for future hope, except it be beyond 
judgment. 

If this judgment be to endless suffering, of course 
the case is settled. But as it is a consignment to 
death and destruction, the way is open to inquire 
whether there is any provision for the recovery of 
the sinner out of that death and after judgment. By 
placing our hope for him here, we avoid all the or- 
dinary objections to the doctrine of a future proba- 
tion. For this second gift of life is not a revival 
of the same life which was lost, nor is it another trial 
of the same personality. These have been con- 
signed to destruction. But it is a re-investiture 
with manhood, by resurrection, of the divine and es- 
sential nature which was the root of being in the for- 
mer man. It is an error, therefore, to speak of this 
as a second probation. The first chapter of the 
man's life is closed in judgment never to be re- 
opened. The second chapter will have its own ex- 
perience and issues. 



new eschatology explained. 113 

The Bond of Dependence Between the 
Living and Dead. 

There remains another important principle un- 
derlying this whole subject. It is that the human 
race is so constituted that the living and the dead 
are bound together in one organism. It may 
reasonably be asked, how is it that around the core 
of this divine nature in man there can be accumu- 
lated all these accretions of evil until the false con- 
ceals the true ? It is because in the constitution 
of the world, its Creator, for His own wise and 
good ends, has loaded the advancing forms of life 
with the burdens of the past, in order that they 
might lift up the lower forms. Man, standing at 
the head of all the lower forms of created life, 
" made a little lower than the angels ?? ( Psa. 8:5 ),, 
must still inherit from them their bondage to cor- 
ruption, so that in his "deliverance into the liberty 
of the glory of the sons of God 77 they may be de- 
livered. 

And so with the generations of mankind. They 
each inherit the infirmities and evils of those that 
preceded them, so that, in bearing their iniquities^ 
they may also work out their deliverance. Each 
human being comes into the world loaded with 
this heritage of evils from the past. And not only 
so ; his life, it may be, becomes, in some sense, a 
receptacle for their vanished lives. Is there not 
reason to believe that the disembodied spirits of 
these dead are held in being through their connec- 



114 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

tion with the living generations of men that are 
still fighting on the arena of this present life ? 
Each man living is the possible organic centre of a 
whole group of those who have here fought and 
failed. May they not furnish the materials for that 
fabric of evil personality into which so many 
human lives develop ? 

The Elect and Later-born Alike Before God. 

But if this law of heredity and transmission of 
life and character brings evil to the race, it is still 
more potent for good. For by it blessings are 
transmitted backward as well as curses forward. 
The just and good man who triumphs over the ills 
of life — especially if Christ, the great Conqueror in 
this race- battle be formed in him — wins blessing, 
not only for himself, but for those who went before 
him. Every good man becomes thus a saviour of 
his fellow-men. Or rather, Christ in him and 
through him carries on His work of saving the 
world. This explains why so much stress is laid 
in the Old Testament upon the doctrine of redemp- 
tion through a seed, and why the doctrine of 
election is so prominent in the New Testament. 

No more serious mistake in theology can be 
made than to suppose that God's mercy in salva- 
tion terminates upon the elect. They are chosen 
as a first-born company, in order that through 
them His mercy may reach the later- born. These 
elect fill up that which is behind of the sufferings 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 115 

of Christ, and are even now with Him being 
baptized for the dead. That is, what they endure 
and suffer in their present conflict with sin and the 
world, inures to the benefit of the dead and helps 
to achieve their deliverance. Each victor in this 
world-long conflict carries with him a train of cap- 
tives, who are through him set free. The elect are, 
therefore, even now kings and priests unto God. 

Priestly Work of the Saints Carried Into 
Eternity. 

We are not to suppose, however, that this 
priestly work of the saints is all done this side of 
the grave. The saints are the only class of men 
who rise beyond death immediately into the 
energies and prerogatives of that divine manhood 
of which Jesus is the head. Notwithstanding that 
some of them may still be held in that state which 
the New Testament defines as sleep, it is certain 
that such of them as, like Paul, have fought the 
good fight and finished their course, already live 
and reign with Christ. And these, under Him, 
carry on now the work of salvation. We, who are 
still warring in the flesh, are surrounded and helped 
in unknown and wondrous ways by these ministers 
of God. This is their blessed occupation. 

From this point of view Heaven and hell are 
seen to be much nearer to us than we have imag- 
ined. The denizens of the unseen world become 
co-partners with those of us who are still fighting 



116 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

the battle of life on the arena of this present world. 
The processes of human life going on around us 
are seen to be charged with the interests and 
destiny, not only of the living, but of the dead who 
have gone before us. These processes become the 
methods by which God is working out the issues, 
both of retribution and salvation, visiting the 
iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and 
awarding to every one of us according to our works. 

The Version of the Gospel that will Win. 

It only remains to say that we have here a ver- 
sion of the gospel for which the heathen world is 
waiting, and without which is it not clear that the 
heathen will not be won to the obedience of the 
faith which is in Jesus Christ ! What they need 
is a revelation of the Word of God, which shall ex- 
plain to them the enigma of this present human 
life in such a way as shall preserve that identity of 
interest between the living and the dead which 
God has put into the constitution of the race, and 
which shall disclose to them that hope for the dead 
which is of the very essence of the gospel of Christ, 
and which has been long hidden from the eyes 
even of the Church.* 



*Many persons have been revising their personal 
creeds, not only in this country, but in all countries. 
People, without communicating much with one another, 
have become aware of this, and they are also aware 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 117 

that the personal belief of a very large number of 
people is larger, broader, higher and deeper than the 
long- accepted formularies of the Church. 

When is this growth going to stop ? Not till we all 
come in the unity of faith to the measure of the stature 
of the fullness of Christ. There is not an iron-bound 
creed in the world that will stand the slow, even, all- 
around, tremendous pressure of live thought. It is the 
thought and the work of foreign missions swelling within 
the heart of the Church that are splitting it asunder. 
Somehow, our creeds must be adapted to the universal 
offer of salvation. 

Certain opinions have been for a long time ferment- 
ing in the heart of the Church, looking to wider and 
grander things than the creeds contemplate. Opinions 
are like powerful explosive gases, harmless if you give 
them opportunity to expand ; dangerous if you confine 
them. Give them plenty of manholes and leave them 
open and there is no danger. We have not had a suffi- 
cient number of manholes in our creed, or if we have, 
some one has closed them, and we are liable to be blown 
to pieces. 

But, instead of being alarmed at this state of things, 
we should rejoice. It is but the progress toward a 
higher, sweeter, purer faith. The man of to-day does 
not think and feel as the man of the sixteenth century. 
John Calvin, in his most martinet moments, never 
dreamed that he was able to give the limits to all relig- 
ious thought to the end of the world, and that no man 
was ever to think outside of his statements. We have 
come to a sprouting time. The tree of the Church is 
swelling in all its buds and breaking into flowers of 
beauty, but the trunk is the same, only stronger and 
larger. Nothing that is true is going to be hurt in all 
this investigation. The Church has gone through such 
times again and again, until the heresy of one age has 
become the orthodoxy of the next. — Rev. 8. B. Rossiter, 
D. D., in New York Tribune. 



118 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

No gospel will ever win the heathen at large 
which fixes an impassable gulf of despair between 
them and their ancestral dead, whose lives they 
look upon as continued in themselves. While a 
gospel which would call them into fellowship with 
Christ's sufferings and death, not only as a way of 
salvation for themselves, but as a baptism for 
their kindred dead, would at once light up for 
them the dark problem of the world with a great 
light out of Heaven, and bring to them that "hope 
toward God that there shall be a resurrection of 
the dead, both of the just and of the unjust " (Acts 
24:15), for which they have long been waiting in 
weariness and gloom. 

The Type of Eschatology to Convert the 
World With. 

The present need of the Church is such an Escha- 
tology to offer to the heathen, Scriptural, rational 
and scientific, commending itself to every man's 
conscience in the sight of God. Our work has 
been an endeavor to supply this need. And the 
eyes of men are now opening to this great principle, 
that here and now in the depths of our existing 
humanity there are going on God's great processes 
of redemption, of reward and retribution, of sancti- 
fication, of resurrection, and that the goal toward 
which God is working is not the peopling of some dis- 
tant region of the skies with the human race trans- 
formed into angels, but to people this earth with a 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 119 

redeemed humanity, purified from sin and disease, 
emancipated from death, and transformed into His 
image. Let all this be realized and the relation of 
the Church to this divine plan be perceived, then 
will our duty to our human brethren under it loom 
up before us in a new and commanding light. 

A View of Man's Complex Nature. 

The philosophy of human nature and its re- 
lation to the divine nature which we have been con- 
sidering, are based on the fact that there is an 
element in man which is individual and immortal, 
and an element of outward personality which is 
transient and perishable. We apply the term in- 
dividual to the former, because the word defines 
that which is not divisible, and which is, therefore, 
permanent and essential. The word " person" is 
usually so applied, but the etymology of the word 
fixes it rather as definitive of the human existence 
through which the essential man finds outward ex- 
pression. That which is (esse) is eternal ; that 
which exists (existere) is changeable and destruc- 
tible. We may say of a man, " He is no longer 
the same person." We could never say of him, 
" He is not the same individual." 

It is this distinction that lies at the basis of the 
Scriptural teaching concerning the old man and the 
new man, the natural man and the spiritual man. 
We find early recognition of this principle in the 
twofold names borne by men who were eminent in 



120 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

the history of God's dealings with the race. 
Abram was the Chaldean name of the patriarch 
who, at the command of God, removed to Canaan. 
But, as his spiritual nature developed, his name 
was changed to Abraham, the father of a multitude. 
The natural man Jacob, the supplanter, became 
Israel, a prince of God. The ambitious, impulsive, 
and fickle Simon became Peter, the rock. Saul of 
Tarsus, the persecutor, became Paul, the servant 
of Christ and apostle to the Gentiles. 

These are instances in which the double character 
in these men was marked by a double name. 
When Peter was about to fall and deny his Master, 
the Lord in warning him addresses him by his old 
name, belonging to his natural, carnal self, "Simon, 
Simon, Satan hath desired to have thee that he 
might sift thee as wheat. " 

We find two names applied even to our blessed 
Lord. His human name was Jesus. The name 
appropriate to Him in His divine nature is Christ: 
He is the only one of all the sons of men whose 
outward personality was a perfeet expression of 
His divine being. Hence His human personality 
was glorified as a perfect temple for the indwelling 
of God. And thus it became fixed as the law of 
humanity, that it can become the permanent dwell- 
ing-place of God only as it is built up into a per- 
sonality suited to His abode. 

The old man must be given over to death in 
order that the new man may be raised up in power. 
The old treacherous Simon must give place to the 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 121 

intrepid Peter, counting it all joy that he could 
suffer for the name of Christ. The blaspheming 
Saul must cast off his old manhood, with all its 
cruel bigotry and pride, and become the holy and 
fervid Paul, consumed with zeal in his Master's 
service. 

Spiritual Transformation by Natural Law. 

Now this great change was virtually the sur- 
render to crucifixion and death of the sinful per- 
sonality into which these men had in their past 
lives developed, in order that the spiritual nature 
in them, which had been kept back and thwarted, 
might, through the quickening power of the Spirit 
of Christ, assert itself, renewing them in the spirit 
of their mind and transforming them into the 
Christ likeness. 

This change is frequently spoken of as a birth or 
a begetting. But nothing can be begotten or born 
unless there be a germ receptive of the new life or 
nature imparted. There must, therefore, be a 
germinal divine nature in every man made in God's 
image. And it is in this that his true and perma- 
nent individuality resides. This is the only 
element in his being that is essential and immortal. 
And it is only as this diving germ appropriates 
and assimilates to itself the properties and traits 
in man's being, which we call personal and which 
make up his external form and character, that his 
personality becomes abiding. Hence, the only 



122 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

basis for personal continued existence is character. 
The individual being of every man, even the 
wicked, is preserved. But the objective person- 
ality, the exterior fabric of the man's life, must 
perish, so far as it is the wood, hay and stubble of 
a life, out of fellowship with God. 

This is so far a destruction of the man himself 
that such men are constantly spoken of in Scripture 
as destroyed. No threat of punishment is half so 
frequent as this, " All the wicked shall He de- 
stroy," " Whose end is destruction, " etc. This 
must be either extinction, or it is the destruction 
of the character of manhood in which the dormant 
spiritual life of these men is quenched, which, in 
the case of thoroughly bad men, must be a destruc- 
tion of them as known to themselves. Such men 
"lose themselves; " they " lose their souls," for 
soul pertains to this fabric of personality which 
may perish and be cast away. It is only spirit 
that is immortal.* A man's "soul" becomes im- 
mortal only as it becomes transfused and pervaded 
by the Spirit of God. 

In the right understanding of this distinction be- 
tween the elements of man's complex being there is 
to be found the reconciliation between the two sides 



* But souls that of His own good life partake, 
He loves as His own self; dear as His eye 

They are to Him ; He'll never them forsake. 
When they shall die, then God Himself shall die. 

They live, they live in blest eternity ! — Henry More, 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 123 

of Scripture teaching concerning man. These 
represent him as dead in Adam, but as made alive in 
Christ ; as made in God's image, and as a child of 
the devil ; as cast into hell, and as ransomed from 
death and hell. And they are all consistent with 
the fact that there is a germinal divine nature in 
man, which must finally reach the goal of complete 
expression in a human personality that shall be 
the perfect image of God, while all imperfect ex- 
pressions of that image must perish from the way. 

The Flesh vs. the Spirit. 

The distinctive blessing offered now in the gospel 
is that through the grace and power of Christ men 
may so come into fellowship with Him in His 
sufferings and death, as to experience here and 
now the power of His resurrection, and so, upon 
the dissolution of the earthly house, to enter upon 
the Heavenly. But the majority of men are not 
" saints." They die out of Christ and in need of 
further earthly discipline before they can enter into 
the life eternal. 

The only place for such discipline that we know 
anything about is here on the earth, and the uni- 
form mode appointed by God for conducting it is 
judgment in the flesh, the flesh being that mode of 
human existence which furnishes the requisite con- 
ditions for this trial. 

Every saint and martyr who has entered into life 
won his crown on this arena. We know of no 



124 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

other field upon which it can be won. Hence we 
say we know of no ground for further hope in the 
case of the myriads of mankind, many of them 
living and dying far down the scale of existence, 
except that afforded by this hope of further trial in 
the flesh. This is the natural basis of the doctrine 
of re-incarnation, or the revealed fact of resurrec- 
tion. 

Scripture speaks of but two kinds of men — the 
earthy and the Heavenly. It hints, indeed, that 
there are disembodied spirits, called " unclean 
spirits,' 7 or " uncleansed, 77 as the Greek word im- 
plies. And it is altogether likely that these spirits 
once animated men. One of their chief character- 
istics is a desire to again possess themselves of the 
bodies of men. But a disembodied ghost is not a 
man, and it could never have the trials and expe- 
riences of manhood. Hence, as St. Peter tells us, 
the gospel was preached to spirits of the dead in 
prison, i ' that they might be judged according to men 
in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit' 7 
( I. Pet. 4:6 ). Their hope of future life, " accord- 
ing to God in the spirit, 77 rests upon such further 
judgment. This requires their re-investment with 
manhood in the flesh. This is re-incarnation, vir- 
tually resurrection. 

Life Transmitted Only Through a Seed. 

With this accords the whole drift of Scripture 
teaching about redemption through a seed. The 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 125 

life of all living things is treasured up for trans- 
mission and preservation in a seed. Admit that 
this law prevails also in the case of man, and that 
herein lies the basis for his hope of a future life, 
and the way is at once prepared for a complete 
reconciliation between science and religion. 

We may not see, indeed, how personal conscious- 
ness can be preserved in this way. But we fail to 
see any Scripture warrant for an uninterrupted per- 
sonal consciousness except in the case of the godly. 
Even some of this class are said to " sleep " in 
death until Christ comes to raise them out of sleep. 
But the wicked are always spoken of as ' c per- 
ished," as " destroyed," their memory and sense 
gone (Psa. 6:5, 115:17; Phil. 3:19). "The dead 
praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into 
silence." These statements 3 to our mind, are con- 
sistent with the view that the spirits of the dead 
are indestructible, but that the continuity and self- 
consciousness of their existence as men have been 
interrupted. 

As men they are "lost" and "outcast." But 
their constant endeavor is to recover standing in 
embodied life as men. Hence, their apparent 
effort to enter into men, as in the case of the man 
spoken of in Luke 11:21-26, into whom seven 
spirits more wicked entered, "and the last state 
of that man was worse than the first. ' } 

The full meaning of the term "flesh" may not 
be attainable until we perceive that it is not only 
the abode of a dominant human soul, but the har- 



126 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

bor in which the homeless spirits of the imperfect 
dead seek shelter and recovery. Why is it that 
every one of us is so hampered and burdened in 
our efforts to live a pure and righteous life? May 
it not be in part because these evil spirits of the 
past are ever seeking to possess themselves of our 
bodies and souls ! They interrupt our good 
thoughts, weaken our resolves, arouse evil tempers 
and passions, infect our bodies with disease, and 
throw the whole organism out of balance, in their 
effort to use it as a ladder by which they may 
climb up out of their darkness into the light of life. 

Boom for the Prayer — Angels and Minis- 
ters of Grace Defend Us. 

Here lies the chief stress of our manifold tempta- 
tions, our faltering struggles, our sad failures in 
the Christian life. But this is just the trial where- 
unto we are appointed. The whole creation is so 
constituted that each advancing form of creature- 
hood must carry such a burden from the past. 
And when we lift ourselves up — rather when we 
are uplifted by the grace of Christ — we help for- 
ward those that are behind us. Here lies the secret 
of the triumph of the race through a conquering 
seed. As our Head and Lord in His signal tri- 
umph broke down the gates of Hades and set free 
a " multitude of captives, " so each son of God to 
whom He gives power to conquer, enters into fel- 
lowship with His " baptism for the dead," and 
shares in the fruits of His victory. 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 127 

His liberating work, it is true, reached primarily 
only the spirits of the righteous who had been 
waiting for the promised Deliverer. Only such 
holy souls were in affinity with His. But in us 
He is reaching down to still lower deeps of those 
who have been sitting in darkness and the shadow 
of death. And it is ours to fight the good fight of 
faith, not only that we may lay hold on eternal life 
for ourselves, but that we may " heal the sick and 
raise the dead " of this mass of humanity sub- 
merged in death, some portion of which cleaves to 
every one of us. 

Our helpers in this struggle are our victorious 
brethren and kindred who have gone before us. 
One chain of life binds the whole race together, 
living and dead. But until the members of this 
great organism of humanity are prepared to rise 
into the rank of the Heavenly, of whom Christ is 
the first fruits, they must make their advance 
along the scale of earthly manhood. They must 
pass successfully through the ordeal of judgment 
in the flesh before " they can live unto God in the 
spirit." 

Mystery Involved in the Constitution of 

Man. 

We hardly begin to understand the mysteries 
concealed in the heights and depths of this last and 
highest of God's creations — the human race. To us 
the thought seems incredible and repulsive that the 



128 NEW ESCHATQLOGY. EXPLAINED. 

living generations of mankind should be a re- 
ceptacle for the vanished lives of the race, and yet 
the hope of a future life for the masses of the dead 
who have died in sin would seem to reside in that 
fact, Such is the inference from all that we can 
learn of this matter from either science or Scripture. 
The life of the living in perfecting itself reproduces 
and restores the dead. The Son of Man, who has 
life in Himself, and who imparts it in ever widen- 
ing circles to other sons of men, shall thus bring 
back all who are in their tombs, some to the resur- 
rection of life, and others to a resurrection of judg- 
ment, which, as we have seen, is restoration to 
that form of existence in which they can be judged 
in the flesh. 

No other view than this is consistent with that 
conception of redemption which is fundamental in 
the Old Testament, and which must therefore un- 
derlie the New Testament. There, in the Old 
Testament, it is always through a preserved and 
perfected seed that all the families of the earth 
were to be reached and blessed. The pious 
Hebrew, in contemplating the work of death upon 
the successive generations of his people and the 
failure of God's promised salvation, always took 
refuge in this thought: "The children of Thy 
servants shall continue, and their seed shall be es- 
tablished before Thee" ( Psa. 102:18-28). He 
knew that somehow he should be hereafter blessed 
in the blessing of his children. His seed would 
treasure up and restore what he had lost. This 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 129 

was his hope for Israel and for the world, a hope 
to which the prophets often gave expression, as in 
Isaiah 51:4-8: 

" Attend unto me, oh ! my people; and give ear 
unto me, oh. ! my nation : for a law shall go forth 
from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for 
a light of the peoples. My righteousness is near, 
my salvation is gone forth, and mine arm shall 
judge the peoples ; the isles shall wait for me, and 
on mine arm shall they trust. Lift up your eyes 
to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath : 
for the heavens shall wax away like smoke, and 
the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they 
that dwell therein shall die in a like manner ( or, 
in margin, like gnats ) ; but my salvation shall be 
forever, and my righteousness shall not be abol- 
ished. . . . For the moth shall eat them up 
like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like 
wool ; but my righteousness shall be forever, and 
my salvation unto all generations." 

This is God's comfort for both the elect and for 
the nations, that while all flesh withers as the 
grass, His unchanging purpose of salvation spans 
the ages and reaches to all generations. And, 
therefore, it must be through the succession of 
generations that this purpose is wrought out, and 
this word of our God is made good forever. 

Summary of Doctrine. 

To summarize what has been offered in support 
of the view that the resurrection of the unjust may 



130 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

be a return to the bondage and discipline of another 
period of life upon earth, and that the way of 
this return is that of re-birth or resurrection, let it 
be noted : 

1. This view adapts itself easily to the Scripture 
teaching that there are two grades of manhood — 
the earthy and the Heavenly — and to the fact that 
the Old Testament always connects its hope for the 
future of mankind with the survival of a seed and 
the succession of generations. ( See Isaiah 
51:4-8.) 

2. It agrees with the uniform teaching of science 
concerning the conservation and progress of life. 

3. It provides a natural and reasonable solution 
of the problem of the destiny of the immense 
masses of low-grade men who have lived and died 
on this planet from the earliest times. 

4. As to how far this theory applies to the 
higher grades of humanity in whom the spiritual 
nature has been awakened into activity, there is 
need to carefully discriminate. The necessity for 
such return to earthly discipline cannot exist in 
the case of those to whom the life of Christ has 
been imparted, and whose word is, " Because I 
live, ye shall live also." 

5. But below this class, who u have received 
power to become the sons of God," there may be 
a large class in whom the latent power of this 
divine humanity has been aroused, and in whom 
there have begun to appear the fruits of righteous 
conduct and a loving spirit, without a conscious 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 131 

union with Christ, the only source of such good- 
ness. This would cover the case of devout heathen 
and of upright men in every nation. For these 
there may be provision for further discipline and 
advancement in the life of the spirit, without a re- 
incarnation or resurrection. It is only those who 
have not risen above the grade of "natural" men, 
and who are of the earth earthy, who must needs 
be retained for a time within this sphere of bondage 
to corruption. 

6. So far as Scripture or reason gives light, we 
know of no way by which the human being may 
grow into the stature of perfect divine manhood, 
except as made perfect through the sufferings and 
conflicts incident to life in the flesh. Even the Cap- 
tain of our salvation was made perfect through 
sufferings (Heb. 2:10). And the "resurrection 
of the unjust," out of death is a "resurrection 
unto judgment" that is of renewed subjection to 
the bondage and discipline of an earthly life. 

7. Our final inquiry is this: Is there in every 
human being an essential man, divine and imper- 
ishable, and an existent man, earthly and mortal ? 
If there be, then, salvation becomes the rescue of 
the essential man from all that obstructs his path 
to perfect manhood ; and retribution is the hand- 
ing over of the existent man to the discipline of 
death, as the appointed way of transforming the 
real man into a perfect expression of the divine. 



132 new eschatology explained. 

Distinction Between the Immoetal Spirit of 
Life and the Conscious Being it Animates. 

In our human thinking a clear distinction is to 
be made between that spirit of life from God which 
lives in man, and which is immortal, and a man's 
continued possession of it in separate personality 
as an eternal temple for God's in-dwelling. His 
spirit may return to God who gave it. It can 
never die, but the being it animated may be left to 
vanish away. The man] as to body and soul, may 
be thus destroyed, albeit the divine spirit of life 
within him be indestructible. 

Somewhere in this line lies the meeting-ground 
between the current theory of the native immor- 
tality of man, and the evident teaching of Scripture 
that only those who receive Christ possess eternal 
life. With the modification thus suggested, we are 
at one with that growing class of thinkers which 
embraces many of the most thoughtful theologians 
in this country and in Europe, that no such conten- 
tion as a realm of lost souls sustained in endless 
life of suffering, is conceivable. 

Ultimate End of Eesurhection. 

We have differed from this school, however, con- 
cerning the nature and purpose of the promised 
resurrection of the unjust. We believe that this pro- 
vision of resurrection secures that no man shall 
suffer the final penalty of extinction, until after re- 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 133 

co very to a new stage of being ; and that this re- 
covery is for the gracious purpose of bringing to the 
knowledge of the truth, in order that they may be 
saved, the multitudes who have never in this life 
been put to a full moral testing under the gospel of 
Christ. 

Concerning the Gospel to the Dead. 

Such a testing by the gospel before death or after 
death, would seem in reason to belong to every 
human being, to the dead as well as to the living. 
u He gave Himself a ransom for all, to be testified 
in due time " ( I. Tim. 2:6 ). 

There are two distinct intimations in the First 
Epistle of Peter that our Lord Himself proclaimed 
the good tidings to the dead ; after that ' i He was 
put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the 
spirit" (I. Pet. 3:18). Such is the common 
historical interpretation of these two passages 
(3:19, 4:6): " By which He went and preached 
unto the spirits in prison. " u For this cause 
was the gospel preached to them that are dead, 
that they might be judged according to men 
in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.' 7 

His ". quickening by the Spirit " was His resur- 
rection ( compare Ephes. 2:5, Eom. 8:11, and 
parallel passages ). The gospel which he preached 
( the Greek word is heralded ) to these spirits of 
the dead was the fact of His resurrection, conveying 
to them the hope of a resurrection. There was no 



134 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

new probation involved in this proclamation : there 
was only the pledge that these lost spirits would be 
restored to another earthly life. This would bring 
with it its own discipline and probation. For em- 
bodiment in earthly existence necessarily would 
bring them under new conditions of trial and judg- 
ment. 

From this point of view the words of the Apostle 
in the second passage are easily understood. This 
is the very fact they assert, that the good tidings 
of Christ's resurrection were preached to the 
dead for this purpose, " that they might be judged 
according to men in the flesh." What this phrase 
means is easily deducible, not only from the words 
themselves, which mean precisely this — that these 
dead were to be subjected to another process of 
judgment under the conditions of earthy manhood, 
— but it is plain, also, from the drift of thought 
through the whole context. Both of these chapters 
in Peter are occupied with this subject of trial and 
judgment in the flesh. A man must suffer in the 
flesh in order to cease from sin. The supreme ex- 
ample of Christ is appealed to as the one instance of 
complete victory in this trial. He " suffered for 
us in the flesh, V- being reproached and reviling not 
again, faithful even unto death. 

The Apostle is throughout urging his fellow 
Christians to the same fidelity. Judgment under 
the conditions of fleshly manhood, to which Christ 
voluntarily subjected Himself for our salvation, is 
the thought governing all this part of the epistle. 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 135 

And Christ's victory under this trial had made 
Him the source of blessing and recovery, even to 
" spirits in prison." They were to have the op- 
portunity of " living unto God in the spirit," 
through resurrection to another life on earth, in 
which they would pass through another process of 
judgment which might issue in final victory. 

The Eesuerection of Judgment Tantamount 
to Be-incarnation. 

If this natural interpretation of this passage be 
admitted, we have at once a firm foothold in 
Scripture for the doctrine of re-incarnation as the 
method of the resurrection of the unjust. The 
just man does not, of course, need to come back 
to life under such conditions of bondage and suffer- 
ing, but, like Christ, rises at once above them into 
that region of triumphant and immortal manhood 
unto which He was raised. But the unjust man 
must undergo another process of " judgment in 
the flesh ' ' before he can live unto God in the spirit. 

We have found that the unjust can be restored 
to life only on the earthly plane, which is neces- 
sarily that of restraint and judgment, and that, 
therefore, they are probably restored by re-birth 
to another life on the earth. Such a view cuts the 
ground from under all the ordinary objections to 
an extension of probation, and fixes the place for 
gospel preaching to both quick and dead here in 
this sphere of earth and time. 



136 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

But whether or not mistaken as to the when and 
how of this resurrection, the fact that it is re- 
demptive in its design, and gracious in its oppor- 
tunity, is the morning- star that lights up the dark- 
ness of this whole subject. ' ' Judgment in the flesh' ? 
is God's uniform way of training and perfecting 
human souls. The spiritual nature in man must 
wrestle with and subdue the carnal, before the 
divine-human nature is perfectly formed and per- 
sonalized in a son of man who is also a son of God. 
Man must suffer in the flesh in order to cease from 
sin. 

The True Philosophy of Eesurrection. 

This principle requires the re-embodiment, un- 
der earthly conditions, of " spirits in prison," 
who are held in bondage because not yet fit for eman- 
cipation into life. Their resurrection must, there- 
fore, be a resurrection " of judgment, " and under 
the yoke of the creature which is a " bondage to 
corruption." Thus they are " judged according to 
men in the flesh — that is, as men in the flesh are 
always judged, — in order that, through correction 
and discipline, they may rise above these condi- 
tions to life in the spirit-^the resurrection of life. 

These are apparently legitimate conclusions 
from Scripture and reason as to the mysteries of 
life, death, resurrection, judgment, immortality, 
the government of God, the nature and destiny of 
man, the second death, the issue of the eternal ages, 



NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED, 137 

when God shall be all in all. But speculate, analyze, 
scrutinize, generalize as we may — explore the vast, 
pierce the minute, measure the heights, fathom the 
depths, — who- after all, can satisfactorily solve the 
secret of life and of the universe and of the ways of 
God with man ! Who can fully explain the why, the 
how, the when of the creation of God and the 
destiny of man I Can^st thou by searching find 
out God ! Can'st thou find out the Almighty to 
perfection % High as Heaven, what can'st thou do! 
Deeper ttjan hell, what can'st thou know 1 O the 
depths, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of 
God ! How unsearchable His judgments, and 
His ways past finding out ! 

Let us, then, devoutly close this chapter of 
questionings with a part of the sublime apostrophe 
to the Infinite Creator by the Eussian poet, 
Derzhavin. 

O Thou Eternal One ! Whose presence bright 

All space doth occupy, all motions guide ; 
Unchanged through time's all devastating flight ; 

Thou only God ! There is no God beside ! 
Being above all beings ! Mighty One ! 

Whom none can comprehend and none explore : 
Who fill'st existence with Thyself alone, 

Embracing all, supporting, ruling o'er — 
Being whom we call God — and know no more ! 



In its sublime research, Philosophy 
May measure out the ocean- deep — may count 

The sands or the sun's rays — but, God ! for Thee 
There is no weight or measure — none can mount 



138 NEW ESCHATOLOGY EXPLAINED. 

Up to Thy mysteries. Reason's brightest spark, 
Though kindled by Thy light, in vain would try 

To trace Thy counsels, infinite and dark, 
And thought is lost ere thought can soar so high r 

Even like past moments in eternity. 



Thou from primeval nothingness did'st call 

First chaos, then existence. Lord ! on Thee 
Eternity had its foundation : — all 

Sprang forth from Thee ! — Of light, joy, harmony,, 
Sole origin ! All life, all beauty Thine. 

Thy Word created all and doth create, 
Thy splendor fills all space with rays divine. 

Thou art, and wert, and shaltbe Glorious ! Great ! 
Light-giving, life -sustaining Potentate. 



Thy chains the unmeasured universe surround : 

Upheld by Thee, by Thee inspired with breath ! 
Thou the beginning with the end hast bound, 

And beautifully mingled life and death ! 
As sparks mount upward from the fiery blaze, 

So suns are born, so worlds spring forth from Thee !l 
And as the spangles in the sunny rays 

Shine round the silver snow, the pageantry 
Of Heaven's bright army glitters in Thy praise. 



A million torches lighted by Thy hand 
Wander unwearied through the blue abyss ; 

They own Thy power, accomplish Thy command,, 
All gay with life, all eloquent with bliss. 

What shall we call them ? Piles of crystal light ? 



NEW ESCHATOLOG-Y EXPLAINED. 139 

A glorious company of golden streams? 
Lamps of celestial ether burning bright ? 

Suns lighting systems with their joyous beams ? 
But Thou to these art as the noon to night ! 



Yes ! As a drop of water in the sea, 

All this magnificence in Thee is lost : 
What are ten thousand worlds compared to Thee? 

And what am I then ? Heaven' s unnumbered host,. 
Though multiplied by myriads, and arrayed 

In all the glory of sublimest thought, 
Is but an atom in the balance, weighed 

Against Thy greatness — a cypher brought 
Against infinity ! O, what am I then ? Nought. 



Nought ! Y"et the effluence of Thy light divine, 

Pervading worlds, hath reached my bosom too 
Yes ! In my spirit doth Thy Spirit shine, 

As shines the sunbeam in a drop of dew. 
Nought ! Y T et I live, and on hope's pinion fly 

Eager toward Thy presence ; for in Thee 
I live and breathe and dwell ; aspiring high, 

Even to the throne of Thy divinity. 
I am, O God ! and surely Thou must be ! 



PART THE THIRD. 



ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF THE CHURCH 
OF THE FUTURE. 



Lo ! In the clouds of Heaven appears 

God's well-beloved Son : 
He brings a train of brighter years, 

His kingdom is begun ! 
He comes a guilty world to bless with mercy, truth 
and righteousness. 

Oh, Father ! haste the promised hour 

When, at His feet, shall lie 
All rule, authority, and power, 

Beneath the ample sky : 
When He shall reign from pole to pole, the Lord of 
every human soul ! 

William Cullen Bryant, 



The wrong that pains my soul below 

I dare not throne above : 
I know not of His hate, — I know 

His goodness and His love. 
I dimly guess, from blessings known, 

Of greater out of sight, 
And, with the chastened Psalmist, own 

His judgments, too, are right. 
I know not what the future hath 

Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 

His mercy underlies. 
And so beside the silent sea 

I wait the muffled oar : 
INo harm from Him can come to me 

On ocean or on shore. 

John G. Whittier. 



PART TEE THIRD, 



ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF THE CHURCH 
OF THE FUTURE. 

SECTION FIRST. 

In drawing the line between the two forms of 
manhood defined in Scripture as " the earthy " and 
"the Heavenly," it is important to include within 
the limits of the earthy all that belongs to it. The 
term ' ' soul ? ? as distinct from spirit, pertains to 
embodiment, yet it implies or expresses a finer 
and more subtle vesture of the spirit than the 
material body. It belongs to the existent or out- 
ward man rather than to the essential man, which 
is spirit. Our Lord Himself represents the soul 
as perishable, and warns men against the danger 
of losing it ( Matt. 10:28 ). But he also represents 
the soul as surviving the death of the body, in the 
parable of the rich man and Lazarus. 

He assumes that the notion or idea of immor- 
tality lies back in the consciousness of mankind as 
a fundamental conception to be taken for granted, 



144 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

not to be argued. It is like the solid earth that 
lies below all the covering of plant and animal life 
on the surface. It can therefore neither be dis- 
placed nor expressed by any logical process. 

Strauss said in his bleak agnosticism : " Belief 
in immortality is the great black incubus that has 
forever been hanging over men, and which they 
must struggle to emancipate themselves from." 
But it is not immortal existence or mere duration 
that concerns us, it is the quality of that existence; 
not that we shall be, but what we shall be after 
death. 

Christ the True Teacher as well as Ex- 
emplar of Besurrection. 

Instantly under the teaching of Christ the point 
of view is shifted from the material realm to the 
spiritual, from the present to the future, from the 
human to the divine. It is as though we saw this 
life of ours from the other side. He unbinds our 
feet, and taking our hand leads us up out of the 
narrow fleshly conception of immortality to view it 
from His standpoint, to realize eternal life, not 
everlasting duration. / am the resurrection and 
the life. Because I live ye shall live also. 

To live by Christ, as Christ lived by the Father, 
that is enough both for this world and for that 
which is to come. Death is not a finality, but 
a step in a process toward a new condition. It is 
not a stoppage of life, but a transition that looks 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 145 

toward more life. It is not a wall, but a door 
that opens into eternity. It is not a finishing up 
of everything here, but the closing of one stage in 
our development and the beginning of another — 
the passage from the caterpillar to the butterfly. 

The truth of immortality, therefore, mast be 
made good in our experience before it has actual 
significance to us. That is, one must realize ifc be- 
fore it can become real to him. Eesurrection, 
eternal life are in the very nature of things, not 
mere scientific or natural facts, but essential reali- 
zations. Christ is the resurrection, Christ is the 
life. To know them one must know Him. 

Only make familiar this life of the flesh with the 
sympathies and thoughts of the life eternal, then 
the unseen world with its saintly dwellers will be 
more real to us than earth. But if some do not 
believe in such an immortality, is it to be wondered 
at, when they are so mortal and fleshly themselves ? 

It is by exceptional faith only that men in the 
fleshly state can be so lifted up into spiritual 
fellowship and correspondence with the invisible, 
as to become themselves risen with Christ. 



Evidence that Christ Himself Tarried 
Awhile in the Psychic Realm. 

But there are not a few proofs from Scripture 
that after death before attaining to the spiritual 
state proper, man may continue to exist in a psy- 



146 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

chic* realm of being that is intermediate between 
the physical and the spiritual realm. The manner 
of our Lord's resurrection, which fact of resurrec- 
tion furnishes the supreme proof that the soul of 
man lives after death, seems to indicate that it 
lingers for a time in the realm of psychic being be- 
fore rising into the glory of the spiritual. At His 
first appearance to Mary Magdalene, Jesus tells her 
that He had not yet ascended to His Father. 

The manner of His subsequent appearance 
during the forty days, favors the view that in a 
psychic body He appeared to the two disciples 
who at first knew him not, and afterward to the 
assembled company, and still later to a portion of 
the disciples on the shore of the lake. He appeared 
in a body that still retained some of the properties 
of earthy manhood. It bore the marks of the 
wounds, it could be handled, it was capable of re- 
ceiving food. Peter affirmed that certain witnesses 
"did eat and drink with Him after He rose from 
the dead " ( Acts 10:41 ). And yet He was able 



* Recent metaphysicians have employed this word 
psychic to mark the difference between psyche, the liv- 
ing principle of man, and pneuma, the rational or 
spiritual part of his nature. This word psychic de- 
scribes the human soul in its relation to sense, appetite, 
and the outer visible world, as distinguished from 
spiritual or rational faculties, which have to do with the 
super- sensible world. — Webster's Dictionary. 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 147 

to appear or disappear at pleasure — to vanish from 
sight, or to enter a room with closed doors. 

But after His ascension He was no more seen of 
men under these forms of psychic manhood. 

Only as a glorified spiritual being was He mani- 
fested to a few eminent saints, such as Stephen and 
Paul and John, who in ecstasy or trance were lifted 
on to a mount of vision, where the spiritual eye was 
opened to behold Him. In those few instances we 
read still of a human form indeed, but of dazzling 
brightness and clad in shining raiment. 

After His ascension the normal method of His 
manifestation was the spiritual. The Holy Spirit 
reveals Him to and in the inmost spiritual being of 
those who are open to receive Him: so that He now 
appears among men in the hearts and lives of those 
in whom His image is being formed. " For me to 
live," says Paul, " is Christ." And before, He 
had said to Saul of Tarsus, u Why persecutest thou 
Me ?" 

It is in evidence, therefore, that there was a tran- 
sition stage of being through which our Lord Him- 
self passed in progress to His exalted seat at the 
right hand of power, and from glory to glory. He 
.would be in all things made like unto His brethren. 

This psychic realm of being, there is reason to 
believe, is the one into which all human souls pass 
at death. It is the Hades of Scripture, a region 
intermediate between the earthy and, natural 
human life, and the spiritual and Heavenly. As 
covering all that intermediate region, it reaches, 



148 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

on the one hand, down to the depths of Gehenna, 
where souls may suffer the second death, and up- 
ward to Paradise and to the gates of that Holy City 
in which is the throne of God and of the Lamb, and 
where they "see His face" and "inherit all things." 

Certain things are eminently true of this psychic 
realm. In the first place, it is the realm of judg- 
ment. The judgment- scene in the twentieth chap- 
ter of Bevelation depicts this ordeal. It has been 
commonly assumed that these verses describe a 
universal judgment after a general resurrection. 
But it is not universal, nor can it be proven that it- 
follows resurrection, or, at all events, a completed 
resurrection. The first verses of the chapter ex- 
pressly exclude from this judgment a certain class 
of martyrs and overcomers. But it proceeds to 
include the mass of the dead. 

They have not yet attained to a proper resurrec- 
tion — the text does not so state, — but it describes 
them simply as the dead who had been held captive 
in the realms of death and Hades. And there is 
nothing in the vision inconsistent with the view 
that it depicts a judgment now going on. Those 
who hold that none of the martyr- saints nor of the 
apostles are yet risen, may of course hold consist- 
ently that this whole scene belongs to the future. 
But we believe, as did all the early Christians, 
that a class of victors are already glorified with 
their Lord. 

It requires a most unnatural distortion of what 
St. Paul wrote in II. Cor. 5, and elsewhere, to 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 149 

maintain that he did not expect to pass directly 
into the presence of the Lord. And, therefore, we 
believe that in this vision St. John saw things 
shortly to come to pass, yea, already begun, and 
that the Sitter on the great white throne is contin- 
ually judging the dead u according to their works." 
Some souls, when the books of their previous lives 
are opened, are found " written in the book of life." 
They are those who " have done good," and are 
worthy of " the resurrection of life." Others must 
go down into "the lake of fire, which is the second 
death." 

Fire destroys, dissolves for new combinations, 
and purifies. The whole realm of death and hell 
must be cast into it. But to assume that these 
souls are cast into the fire for eternal torment, is 
to put not only a false construction upon the nature 
and the function of the destroying agent — it is to 
deny the nature of the being of the soul. 

Only spirit is immortal. Soul pertains to the 
mortal being of man. The soul becomes indestruc- 
tible only as it is penetrated and transformed by 
the Spirit of God. This is its resurrection of life. 
But a soul, which is in reality the psychic vesture 
of spirit, maybe " destroyed," "lost," "perish." 
This is the second death. 

This vision, then, as is common in Scripture, 
presents at one pictorial view the process and re- 
sults of what is in reality an age-long judgment. 
And the destruction of the souls of the dead in the 
lake of fire is a process similar to that destruction 



150 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLO^Y OF 

of the body which is going on around us in the 
sphere of sense and time. Jesus frequently spoke 
to men of the danger of the whole body's being cast 
into hell, where the fire is not quenched. 

This fire was the expressive sign of that destruc- 
tion which is visited upon the bodies of men for 
sin, whose wages is death. He also warned them 
against a possible destruction of the soul in the 
same Gehenna of fire. The destruction of the soul 
necessarily completes the destruction of man as an 
earthly being. For soul forms a part of his present 
embodiment, and it can be Ci saved," only as men 
learn to give up in exchange for it those earthly 
pleasures and ambitions which are so dear to the 
carnal or natural man. 

All this harmonizes with what has been pre- 
viously said concerning the continuity of person- 
ality as dependent upon character. Personality 
resides in soul rather than in the material body. 
But it also, with the exterior body, pertains to ex- 
pression ; it is part of the existent rather than of 
the essential man. And it becomes permanent and 
immortal only as it yields itself to become a true 
expression of the divine man. 

But does the destruction of the psychical man in 
the lake of fire make an end of man ? Here we 
must reply as before : It puts an end to his ex- 
istence, but not to the essence of his being, that is, 
the spiritual nature derived from God, and because 
of which man is made in His image. The un- 
worthy expression of that image is destroyed in 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 151 

the consuming fire ; the image itself, the true 
spiritual being of man, cannot dfe, but must still 
pursue its path toward perfect expression. Here, 
again, comes in the doctrine of re-incarnation, or 
the resurrection to another earthly life for the ends 
of further progress and discipline. 

But an innumerable multitude pass out of this 
state of psychic being into the state of spiritual 
manhood, without this loss of the soul in the con- 
suming fire, and without this necessity of another 
start upon the path to true manhood — that is, with- 
out the necessity of re-incarnation. What determines 
this issue is, of course, the soul's relation to Christ, 
the Saviour of men and the Judge of both living 
and dead. 

We have said that the psychic region fills up the 
space between earth and Heaven, but that, as dif- 
fering from the realm of spirit, it is the region of 
expression and embodiment. On its lower side it 
touches earth. The soul, or psyche, gives form to 
the earthly man. Such souls, therefore, as pass 
out of this body still earthly in their affections and 
pursuits, are still held within the earthly sphere. 

It is from this class that came the manifestations 
of demoniacal possession and of bodily disorder 
which were so marked in the days of Jesus and the 
apostles, and which still abound, although in ways, 
perhaps, less obvious than then. So far as there is 
any reality in modern spiritualistic phenomena, 
those phenomena come from this lower region of the 
psychic realm. 



152 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

And here lies their danger. It is possibly from this 
region that the reUquce of defunct souls, after disso- 
lution, are gathered up for another incarnation. 
This involves a break in their self-consciousness 
and in the thread of their existence. As outcast 
ones they are lost, and must begin to find their way 
back from the outer darkness into the light of life. 
This closeness of relation between the earthy and 
the psychic spheres of man's being, explains also 
how it is that these souls, remanded back to 
earthly conditions, must take the germs of their 
former evils with them. But through further con- 
flict with these ingrained evils, they may find the 
way to overcome them. There is both a purpose 
of judgment and of mercy in this law, which re- 
quires them to reap what they have sown, but 
which gives them also the potency and hope of a 
better harvest from the seed sown in tears. 

The law, too, of solidarity of race comes in to 
help on to a beneficent result. For the principle 
of re-incarnation involves something more than the 
re-embodiment of separate single souls which have 
been lost. The law of heredity favors the view 
that re-incarnation or resurrection may gather up 
such souls as were linked together by ties of kin- 
ship or affinity, grouping them together under the 
headship of a dominant soul, in order to repair 
their waste, and prepare them to reach a higher 
level in the scale of manhood. For, as we have 
stated in other connections, those who reach the 
higher levels in this battle of life, must become the 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 153 

ministers of succor and strength to those who are 
struggling on the lower. 

When we draw the line, therefore, between 
earthy and Heavenly men, as being the only two 
classes of which Scripture speaks, we are not to 
forget that the lines from both these regions over- 
lap and meet in the psychic realm which lies be- 
tween and unites them both. So that it is in one 
sense true that there are earthly men who have 
crossed the line into the unseen world, and who re- 
main earthly there, and are judged there as such. 

But we are not ready to infer from this that no 
law of re-incarnation for such is required, or is 
possible. Because, after the judgment and de- 
struction of such persons in the realm of the dead, 
as depicted in Eev. 20, we would be driven to re- 
gard them as forever extinct, unless there be this 
provision for their recovery through the only pro- 
cess of resurrection that seems possible in their 
case — a re-embodiment under earthly conditions, 
that shall start them again on the experimental 
path toward the ideal manhood, in the image of 
which they were created, and which, to their great 
suffering and loss, they failed to realize. 

Nothing short of such a provision as this can 
either fulfill the divine purpose in the creation of 
man, or make good the divine promises to seek 
and to save the lost through the agency of an elect 
seed of blessing, and to confirm, through a genera- 
tion to come, the promises which the generations 
that have gone failed to obtain. 



PART THIRD 



SECTION SECOND. 

Importance to the Church of a New Aggres- 
sive Line and Basis of Evangelizing 
Effort. 

If the Church of Christ is to conserve the 
precious deposit of the Christian faith with which 
it is entrusted, and to become the instrument of 
largely extending its power among men, it seems 
plain that she must readjust herself to the work in 
hand.^ What are the facts as to her present con- 
dition and influence ? 

She finds herself encumbered with traditions and 
dogmas which have come down with a halo of sanc- 
tity from the past, but which seem ill-adapted to 
meet the issues of the present, and against which 
the intelligence of mankind increasingly rebels. 
We do not now refer to the opposition of that 
1 i wisdom of the world ' ' which loves not the things 
of God. There is an opposition which is more 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 155 

honest and sincere than this, and which is shared 
in by many who love the Church and confess its 
Master as their Saviour and Lord. 



Facts Concerning Alleged Decline of Inter- 
est in the Church. 

The philosophy, the science, the literature, and 
even the Biblical study of our day, have been grad- 
ually undermining that body of doctrine known as 
orthodoxy, which has so long powerfully swayed 
the minds of men. An intelligent lady, living in a 
university town, and with unusual opportunities 
for observation, recently remarked, "Not one of 
the intellectual men of my acquaintance, professors 
and others, can be properly counted as orthodox. " 
Those who do not openly reject, silently protest. 

It is well known how largely in England this 
class have withdrawn their interest from the 
Church. Nor is this result less conspicuous in 
our own country. A much smaller proportion of 
lawyers and physicians and scientists and literary 
men, and even of active business men, are found 
in our Christian congregations than was true of 
them a half a century ago. Many congregations 
in crowded cities and in the sparse and mission 
districts of the country, are dying of atrophy. In 
many places, beyond the few officials who hand 
around the plate, the attendance is made up almost 
wholly of women and children. 



156 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

And yet it cannot be said that men in our day 
are not interested in, or profoundly exercised by, 
the great problems of God and of human destiny. 
The first chosen disciples of our Lord were men. 
And His religion is calculated to stir the souls of 
men to their deepest depths, and to call forth their 
highest activities. The fact is, the theologic forms 
in which the Christian faith has so long been urged 
upon men have largely lost their hold upon the 
thinking class. They cease to hold many of the 
Church's own members. Even the preachers are 
no longer in thorough accord with them. 

As a result, in many cases there is a vacillation, 
a timidity, an apologetic tone, an insincerity about 
the preaching which the hearers do not fail to de- 
tect, and which weakens its power. The average 
Presbyterian preacher, for example, knows some- 
thing about evolution, he reads liberal newspapers 
and some of the magazines and reviews ; he can- 
not avoid looking into some of the questions 
raised by explorers in the fields of science and 
psychology and Biblical criticism ; he reads his 
own Bible and finds that there are other aspects of 
the divine character, and other depths in the 
divine counsels concerning man and the world's 
future, than are comprised in his Confession of 
Faith. And yet he is obliged to pose as a repre- 
sentative and pledged defender of its doctrine of 
God and of man, of the divine dealings with him, 
issuing in the salvation of only the elect, and the 
everlasting punishment of all the rest of mankind. 



the church of the future. 157 

Effect upon the Ministry of Loss of Con- 
fidence in Theologic Forms. 



It is impossible for such a minister , who thinks 
at all for himself, to manifest that spirit of candor 
and of honesty and straightforward appeal, in his 
addresses to the reason and conscience of his 
hearers, that shall powerfully move them toward 
God and duty. If men who speak for God are not 
thoroughly honest in their convictions and in their 
presentations of truth, their hearers will not fail to 
detect it. And worse than this, the spiritual 
power which God only can impart will be absent 
from their message. Men may be kindled to emo- 
tion, but it will be by strange fire not lighted from 
God's altar. They may be aroused to action and 
even loud profession, but the energy of it will burn 
itself down into the cold embers of a name to live 
after one is dead. 

We say, then, that we have arrived at a period in 
the history of the w r orld and of the Church, when 
the providence of God is clearly teaching us that 
there must be a change of base, if the Church is to 
achieve the conquest of the world for Christ. We 
do not mean that any of the prime facts of the 
Christian faith, such as are set forth in the earliest 
and simplest creeds, can be surrendered. We 
must still hold to the rock on which the Church is 
built — the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the 
Son of the living God — to the fact that He died for 



158 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

our sins according to the Scriptures, and rose again 
the third day according to the Scriptures. 

How to Correct the Age-long Errors that 
haye Crept into Theology. 

But we must be willing to let the light of reason 
and of conscience, of history and of science, of 
reverent criticism, into the whole fabric of doctrine 
and of ceremony which through the ages men have 
built up on the foundation of these facts. The 
man is blind who does not see that God is now 
shaking all things wrought into the outward 
structure of His kingdom, for the removal of all 
that has been wrought into it that is false and ficti- 
tious and secular and legendary, in order that the 
things which cannot be shaken may remain. 

And we shall only be following the motions of 
His Spirit if, in the spirit of that liberty wherewith 
He hath made us free, we examine every yoke of 
dogma and of usage, to discover whether it has 
been imposed by Him or is of mere human origin. 
Many of these fetters could never have been forged, 
if the Church had had a more firm and constant 
faith in the power of His indwelling, to preserve 
her against error and to guide her into all truth. 

The greatest want in the Church to-day is a re- 
vival in her of faith in the Holy Ghost, the Lord 
and Giver of life. She has cramped the intellects 
of men and stifled in them the voice of reason and 
of conscience, and substituted faith in formulas and 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 159 

ceremonies for faith in the living God, because she 
has lost faith in His perpetual presence as her 
guide into all truth, and the all-sufficient corrective 
of the errors and strifes that human conceit and ig- 
norance stir up within her. 

The Needed Corrective of the Holy Spirit. 

If she better understood the office of the divine 
Spirit given to be her guide, and trusted Him fully, 
she would allow such scholars as Professor Briggs 
to go on with their investigations undisturbed; and 
such preachers as Lyman Abbott to seek to adapt 
her doctrine of atonement to the changes made 
necessary by the advancing thought of to-day; and 
such preachers as Heber Newton and Dr. Bridgman 
to utter their protests, without rebuke, against the 
partial views of God, and of His relation to His 
creatures, by which His true character and designs 
have been so long concealed. 

Not that we would have the Church commit her- 
self at once to all that these men or others say; but 
she should believe that even these partial voices may 
have some message of truth for her in these days of 
ferment, and that the large and free atmosphere of 
liberty is the one best suited to the unhindered 
operation of the divine Spirit, whose powerful 
agency must in the end expose to her all that is 
false and establish all that is true. 

We <3an trust Him to build us up in the true 
knowledge of God, and to protect us from error, 



160 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

better than any restrictions of an enforced creed, 
or the decrees of ecclesiastical tribunals. So far 
as such men reveal that they are puffed up with 
pride of their own opinions, and that they are not 
studying and acting out of supreme love to the 
Church and to the best interests of their fellow- 
men, so far she may and ought to rebuke them. 
But if she have reason to believe that their spirit 
is true, she will not only wrong them, but distrust, 
and even sin against the Holy Ghost, if she stifle 
their liberty of prophesying. 

The Liberty of Prophesying not to be Fet- 
tered. 

The first requisite, then, for the Church in our 
day is to give free play to the liberty which is the 
mark of the presence in her of the Spirit of the 
Lord, trusting the Spirit to confine that liberty 
within its proper bounds, to moderate its excesses, 
and to cause to emerge out of the confusion which 
may be incident to it that truth which shall be her 
eternal strength and safeguard. 

We may expect, as the result of such free dis- 
cussion, that there will ensue a truer doctrine of 
the Bible as the Word of God; by which it shall be 
viewed, as not designed to supersede and to stifle, 
but to keep alive in the Church a consciousness of 
the operation in her of the Holy Spirit as her per- 
petual inspirer and guide. 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 161 

We may expect that her spiritual judgments in 
the present shall have a voice with those of the 
past in establishing her faith, and that the voice of 
God in His works and in the human soul shall be 
listened to, as well as in His Word. We may ex- 
pect also such advance in all our conceptions of 
Christian truth as these added voices are able to 
contribute. 

Even the doctrine of the Trinity will be so stated 
that its exhibition of the incomprehensible nature 
of God will find its answering witness in the nature 
of man. While the doctrines of the origin of man, 
of the fall, the atonement, of man's relation to his 
Creator, and of his destiny, will be found to be in 
deepest accord with all that can be gathered from 
other sources of the place of man in creation, and 
the goal toward which he is tending. Especially 
must the Church come on to new ground in her 
doctrine of retribution and redemption. 

Exaggerations not Justified Either by 
Eeason or Scripture. 

The original penalty of sin, which is death, she 
has exaggerated into an unwarranted doom to end- 
less torment of a being who can never die. Out of 
the scattered and scanty sayings of our Lord on 
this subject — most of which were esoteric, and not 
one of which bears the meaning put upon them — 
she has built up a doctrine of the susceptibility of 
man to endless suffering; and of an eternal captivity 



162 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

in death and hell, to which not even the promise of 
a resurrection of the dead contributes one ray of 
hope; and the gloom of which the final destruction of 
death and hell will but intensify and blacken into 
eternal darkness — a doctrine utterly unknown to 
the Old Testament, never referred to in a single dis- 
€Ourseof the apostles, and increasingly repugnant to 
the growing spiritual sentiment of her own members. 

And as a means of escape from this unspeakable 
doom she has devised a doctrine of God's right- 
eousness, and of the propitiation of its wrathful 
demands, which make the sinner so much the sub- 
ject of its u scheme of grace," as to weaken his 
sense of responsibility, and to deaden the con- 
sciousness of God within him as his power of re- 
covery ; so that salvation has come to be viewed 
as something done for him by proxy, and not 
wrought in him by the power of God. The idea of 
an imputed righteousness has supplanted that of 
personal righteousness as indispensable to salvation. 

But these exaggerated ideas of man's doom, and 
these meagre ideas of his salvation, have largely 
become possible through an exaggerated estimate 
of his individuality, and the overlooking of his 
organic relations to his kind and race. The salva- 
tion of the individual believer has been viewed 
apart from its relations to that of his kindred and fel- 
lowmen. A whole mine of Old Testament teaching 
on this subject has been left unexplored, and it has 
become the office of the modern scientific study of 
man and of the human race to summon attention to it. 



the church of the future. 163 

Enlarged Meaning Given to Seed. 

We are beginning now to discover a new mean- 
ing in the foundation promises that in a chosen 
seed all the families of the earth are to be blessed. 
Instead of limiting this word Seed to Christ, we find 
that it implies also an elect class, of which He is 
the Head. We begin to see that the Church is not 
a body called into an ark of safety merely for its 
own rescue, but a priestly company called to bear 
with Christ the sins and sorrows of the world, and 
to achieve its salvation. A wide realm of truth 
arising out of the organic relations we sustain one 
to another, and their bearing upon human salva- 
tion, remains yet to be opened. 

Science is showing us, what Scripture has taught, 
that the fathers still live in their children, that 
their sins are visited upon them, and still more, 
their excellencies ; that one generation takes up 
the battle of life where the former one laid it down, 
and that in the fruits of the final victory they both 
have heritage. Our own personal salvation is im- 
mensely dignified when we discover what interests 
from the past centre in it, and what blessings for 
those who come after us are dependent upon it. 

Science a Helper to Scripture Exegesis. 

We believe that the whole doctrine of Chris- 
tianity will be invested with a new interest for men, 
when the meaning of such passages as these shall 



164 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

be better understood : "Believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ and thou and thy house shall be saved 77 
(Acts 16:31). "Ye area chosen generation, a 
royal priesthood" (I. Pet. 2:9). "Of His own will 
begat He us with the word of His truth, that we 
might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures'''' 
(Jas. 1:18). "The Church of the first-born, 
whose names are written in Heaven 77 (Heb. 12:23). 
We believe that these expressions suggest rela- 
tions among the families and generations of man- 
kind established by God in His plan of creation and 
redemption; that they illustrate His great law in 
nature of the survival of the fittest, and the deeper 
law of His word that the fittest survive as the 
channels of ultimate blessing to the less fit ; and 
that, through the operation of this law, a chosen 
portion of mankind are all the time rising above the 
sensuality and sin of the race into the divine and 
eternal life, who thus obtain power to set free from 
death their captive brethren, and to aid those who 
are still struggling in the flesh toward the high goal 
which they themselves have already reached. 

Atonement not a Governmental Device, but 
the Expression of Infinite Love. 

From this point of view the whole scheme of 
Christian doctrine and motive receives a different 
explanation. God 7 s operation in redemption, in- 
stead of being confined to this world and this life, 
covers all the ages and reaches all the generations 






THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 165 

of mankind, past and present, living and dead. 
His mode of salvation, instead of being a govern- 
mental device to meet an abnormal and inconceiv- 
able exigency, is seen to be in harmony with the 
laws that prevail throughout His realm of life — 
laws which look forward to the production of a 
final and perfected form of life in His own image, 
and for whose manifestation the earnest expectation 
of the whole creation waiteth. 

The atonement* is seen to be not a mere legal 
expedient to meet a great emergency, and to buy 
off a portion of mankind from an endless doom, but 
a mighty struggle of God in humanity, and a glo- 
rious uplifting of it along the scale of life to its di- 
vine goal. And our personal interest in it is seen 
to be commensurate with the extent to which that 
power of God is working in us to produce the same 



* The suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ is a suffering, 
not for the sake of letting men off from punishment, but 
for the sake of purifying men. Moses was forgiven, 
and yet Moses was not allowed to go into the Holy 
Land, but saw it afar off, from the top of the mount. 
David, even, was forgiven, yet all the penalty prophe- 
sied by Nathan came upon him; his kingdom was rent 
from him, his shame was spread abroad from one end 
of the nation to the other, yet he was purified. No ! 
Christ has not come into the world to take away pun- 
ishment; that may be taken or left. Punishment is 
mercy when God uses punishment. It is the very 
means of purifying, and it is for purifying that the Lamb 
of God has come into the world. — Lyman Abbott. 



166 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

death to sin> and the same life to righteousness, 
which shall fit us to reign in life with Jesus Christ 
our Lord. 

The motive put before us to submit ourselves to 
this righteousness of God is not merely one of per- 
sonal escape and salvation, but of identification 
with Christ in His administration of life and power; 
by which He shall bring blessing to all the families 
of the earth, and subdue all things to Himself, 
whether they be things on earth or things in 
Heaven. And all the kinships and relations of 
life become, from this point of view, invested with 
new interest. For they are seen to be the earthly 
patterns of Heavenly realities. 

Kindred who have gone before us are seen to be 
bound up with us in the same bundle of life. 
Those who have triumphed are ovr aids and de- 
liverers. Those who are yet under judgment and 
in the bonds of death, follow in our train, if so be 
they may share in the fruits of our victory and be 
led captive out of their captivity. 

Solemnity and Sublimity of the Battle of 

Life. 

The battle of life, fought on this arena of flesh 
and blood, and renewed from one generation to an- 
other, is thus seen to be sublime in the wide range 
of its contestants and in its far-reaching results. 
We wrestle not merely with flesh and blood, but 
with principalities and powers in the unseen world. 



THE CEJURCH OF THE FUTURE. 167 

And as the crown of life to be won is inestimable, 
so are the risks and losses in this conflict great. 
Eetribution is seen to be, not indeed the awful de- 
spair of an endless hell, but the penalties which, 
in the nature of things, inevitably arrest those who 
press forward to the goal of life along false and evil 
paths. 

There are pitfalls of moral degradation in which 
one may lose all that has been gained, in which 
even personal self-consciousness may be sunk, so 
that the man becomes lost to himself and is cast 
away, and the work of building him up into per- 
sonal manhood as an image of God has to be begun 
again far down the scale. This scheme does in- 
deed provide for sinful man a Mediator, and a suc- 
coring ministry of angels and saints, but it pro- 
vides for no salvation by proxy, and holds out no 
other hope than through the attainment of that 
personal righteousness without which no man can 
enter into life. 

Harmony between the Laws of Life and 

the Methods of God in the Seen and 

Unseen World. 

The Christian scheme of salvation, of punish- 
ments and rewards, of the nature and issues of 
human life, must in some such way be shown to be 
in harmony with all the laws of life, and all the 
methods of God's working in those realms of it of 
which we have any knowledge. Things in the 



168 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

unseen realm must be like their patterns in the 
seen. Things present and things to come can only 
be two departments of the one universal kingdom. 
We do not hesitate to say that if the Church in 
our day would — not in any iconoclastic way — but 
in the spirit of true growth and progress, break 
loose from its bondage to the past, and open its 
windows for the light of God to stream in from all 
quarters ; if it would give free play to the operation 
of the Spirit of God in her, who is the Spirit of 
liberty; if she would cease to muzzle the mouths of 
her prophets and teachers, so that they could in- 
terpret the lessons of God's Word and works to 
men, and give unhindered utterance to their high- 
est and best thoughts about Him and His ways, 
with no other restraint than the supreme law of 
unselfish love to God and to man imposes, — there 
would be a marvelous change at once in the whole 
aspect of things. 

Glorious Possibilities of the Future through 
the Power of God in the Church. 

She would then have living issues with which to 
compel the attention of living men. Even if the 
world within the Church were turned upside down, 
the Church itself would be vastly the gainer. And 
her supreme necessity would be met in new and 
surprising manifestations of the power of God 
within her. The very principle of her being is 
that she is a repository of the power of God. That 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 169 

power is almighty. What can it not accomplish % 
It is written that it shall yet transform sons of men 
into sons of God, and make over this old earth — 
the habitation of cruelty and sin — into the abode 
of righteousness, in which God shall make His 
tabernacle with men forever. 

God's Light and Love Like the Latent Ltght 
and Heat in Oil. 

"We have been looking for this power as a down- 
burst out of the firmament above us. What if it 
be a power latent within us, and only delaying its 
manifestation until we shall become vessels meet 
for its use ! God's light and love are like the 
light and heat lying latent or unrevealed in the oil 
before it is burned. Nobody can see the light or 
feel the heat. But burning brings out both ; and 
Christ is a burning lamp, by which God's truth and 
love are brought where man can see and feel them. 
By means of them, the mind is enlightened with 
the knowledge of God, the heart is warmed by 
God's love shed abroad therein, and the impurity 
is in due time burned out. And no power in 
Heaven, earth, or hell can separate us from the 
love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. — 
Eom. 8:38-39. 

That love is expressed in the gracious provision 
of resurrection in Christ, which is God's own affirm- 
ation of His right and purpose to reclaim man, 
His lost child, from sin, death and hell, and to 



170 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

re-invest him with another personality suited to 
his farther training and correction. 

It is because theological teachers have confounded 
the destruction of the old carnal man that refuses 
to be spiritualized, with the destruction of the es- 
sential man himself, that they have fallen into such 
pernicious mistakes as are embodied in the West- 
minster* symbols. 

There is a divine self in every man beneath the* 
existent self, which cannot be destroyed, because it 
is begotten of God and sinneth not. And the res- 
urrection of the saint is the complete personaliza- 
tion of this divine nature in a perfect Heavenly 
manhood. 

The resurrection of the unjust, that is, the resur- 
rection of judgment, while it is a failure to reach 
this goal of manhood, and is a subjection to the 
hazard and suffering of another trial in the flesh or 
in the field of earthly life, is yet a merciful provision 
for their beginning once more to tread the path 
which leads to that goal. 

When the accepted Christian disciple comes to 



* Creeds and Confessions are stamped with the in- 
firmities no less than with the nobleness of the men 
that made them. They are their best thoughts about 
Christian truth, as they saw it in their time ; intrinsic- 
ally they are nothing more ! And any claim of infalli- 
bility for them is the worst kind of popery — that popery 
which degrades the Christian reason, while it fails to 
nourish the Christian imagination.— Principal Tulloch. 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 171 

see the true doctrine of the unity* of mankind, as 
embracing the living and the dead in one organism, 
and to know that each living soul represents on 
the arena of life a series of lives that went before 
it, of which series it is the product and the con- 
tinuation, a wider and deeper sense of individual 
responsibility will be attained. 

The Church Viewed as the First-fruits and 

Its Consequent Eesponsibility to the 

Eace. 

Especially as the Christian views himself as a 
member of the Christ-body which is the first-fruits 

* There is a profound and subtle connection subsisting 
between the various members of the human family. 
The individual is in-woven in the web of humanity ; he 
inherits the nature of his ancestry ; and that ancestry, 
if we calculate backwards by arithmetical progression, 
will be found to include most of the members of the 
race that figured on the stage of human life at some far 
distant epoch in the past. 

In other words, each individual sums up in his own 
person not merely the nature of one separate line cr 
family, but, like a river that gathers up the tributary 
streams that drain a whole region of country, and which 
contains traces of all the soils within that area, he con- 
centrates in his own person the nature of the whole 
human family. The nature of the ancestral source 
bears the potentiality of the nature of the offspring. 
The solidarity of the race and the hereditary transmis- 
sion of a common nature are alike familiar to modern 
science as to Calvinism. — John Wilson. 



172 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

of those redeemed from among men, and who are, 
therefore, charged with the potency and the privi- 
lege of helping to redeem their captive brethren, 
he gains a new sense of what Scripture means when 
it describes him as called by God " into fellowship 
with His Son, Christ Jesus our Lord" (I. Cor. 
1:9 ), with Him to suffer, to " count all things but 
loss," and with Him to be baptized in behalf of the 
dead" ( I. Cor. 15:29). 

This view shows how much closer and more in- 
timate, than is commonly conceived, is the relation 
of the individual Christian to the world's redemp- 
tion, how wide- spread the effect of his personal 
devotion and self-denial, and how indispensable it 
is to the coveted result of growth and unity in the 
knowledge and love of the one Lord and Saviour, 
and the perfection of His blood-bought Church. 

A Beasonable Lament and the Grounds 
Thereof. 

It is the lament of many that the Presbyterian 
Church of our day does not make the proper pro- 
vision for such growth, unity and perfection, and 
that it does not favor the liberty of thought, doc- 
trine and expression belonging to the dispensation 
of the Holy Spirit. She assumes, or rather her 
authorities assume, that the body of divine truth 
is fixed in her formulas, and she, therefore, frowns 
out of her fold any of her ministers, howsoever sin- 
cere and devoted, who seek to break through the 



THE CHUECH OF THE FUTURE. 173 

trammels of her system at any point, and to lead 
her out into larger light and liberty. 

The evils of this cramping system are manifold. 
Men are forced by it to stand as the exponents of 
dogmas which they do not fully accept nor honestly 
preach. Assent and subscription to the creed are 
often made with mental reservation or tergiversa- 
tions, which are wholly out of place in matters of 
religious faith and testimony, where everything 
should be transparent as the light. In this region 
intellectual vacillation or subterfuge becomes the 
parent of spiritual weakness and blight. 

The Holy Spirit to be Honored by the 

Church as Its Perpetual Guide and 

Instructor. 

No Church is properly organized, or deserves the 
name of Church, which does not honor the Holy 
Ghost as perpetual guide and instructor; which does 
not confess that she yet knows only in part and 
prophesies in part, and which is not on the alert to 
receive and welcome such new views of truth as He 
may from time to time impart to her through the 
lips or the pens of her anointed sons. 

In such a Church it comes to pass that character 
counts for far less than creed; that unworthy men 
who will speak her shibboleths have open passport 
to her honors and favors, while consecrated men, 
whose conscience compels them to dissent, and who 
love the Church too truly to keep silent when they 



174 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

think she has been betrayed into ignorance or error, 
are either driven out or are invited to step out; 
no higher standard of Church association or obli- 
gation being admitted than that which makes an 
ordained teacher in the Church the mere mouth- 
piece to utter that which has already been agreed 
upon: "If a minister cannot honestly preach all 
the dogmas of his Church, then as an honest man 
lie should withdraw." This is extolled as the only 
manly course. 

Now is it too much to say that if this degrading 
view of the Church, and of the obligation of her 
ministers to seek her purity and peace, continue to 
prevail, then Ichabod will soon be written upon 
the portals of the Presbyterian Church ? Already, 
in nearly every large city, she is losing hold upon 
that class of educated and upright hearers of which 
her audiences were once largely composed. 

And her hearers miss the sincerity and earnest- 
ness in her pulpits which they have a right to ex- 
pect from men thoroughly in touch with the doc- 
trines to which they stand committed. 

Intellectual and Spiritual Atrophy of a 
Manacled Pulpit. 

This decay is due largely to the fact that the 
power of the Holy Spirit is restrained, under a 
system which quenches His free utterance. One 
of the most earnest and eloquent preachers of that 
Church has deploringly confessed that the enthu- 



THE CHUBCH OF THE FUTURE. 175 

siasm with which he began his ministry had been 
greatly chilled by these restraints, which often held 
him back from speaking out his highest and best 
thoughts of God to men. 

This stifling process tends to intellectual and 
spiritual atrophy. It tempts men into hypocrisy 
and mean subservience to temporal interests, or 
drives out those whose consciences will not suffer 
them to bend to the yoke ; and whom, of all others, 
the Church can least afford to lose. 

This process must needs go on, unless the Church 
make larger room for earnest and sincere souls, 
who in this day of advancing light cannot shut their 
eyes and ears to the widening disclosures of truths 
which God is unfolding from His Word and works, 
and who have no other desire than to use the light 
that comes to them, for His glory and the welfare of 
the Church they love and would most gladly serve. 

The Common Traditional Mistake of the 

Apostate Church of Eome and the 

Eeformed Churches. 

But more than this, the church has for several 
centuries, under the Eoman Catholic Apostacy, re- 
mained under the shadow of a false view of the 
purpose of God in providing for all mankind re- 
covery to another life beyond death, that is, resur- 
rection. 

The Eeformed Churches, in making up. their 
systems, fell into this same traditional mistake. 



176 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

The Scriptures teach that, while the wages of sin 
is death — a death which may carry down even the 
soul into destruction in hell ( Matt. 10:28 ) — God 
has provided redemption from death through resur- 
rection ; which can reach every man, however, only 
in his own order, and with such accessories of 
judgment as shall infallibly render to every man 
according to his work. 

Our Confession of Faith assumes that there is no 
benevolent intent whatever in this provision to raise 
the unjust, but that the effect of Christ's victory over 
death in their case is simply to unspeakably aug- 
ment their doom, adding to the suffering of the soul 
the anguish of an eternal damnation. 

Now we have it to say that this degrading view 
of resurrection, in the case of the immense majority 
of mankind, is utterly unscriptural. It violates 
the whole spirit and letter of Old Testament 
prophecy and confuses it into a hopeless enigma. 
It misconceives the work of redemption, narrows 
the meaning of elect, and mutilates or obscures the 
first principles of the gospel of the grace of God. 

The Principle of Eedemptive Besurrection 
Cannot be Safely Slurred. 

We entreat our brethren, therefore, to examine 
this principle of redemptive resurrection in the 
light of Scripture and of reason and of science, and 
to ask themselves whether they cannot find the 
key here to all the dark problems which vex them 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 177 

in their effort to revise their standards. They are 
not bound to follow us in our attempts to adjust 
this principle to other truths of Scripture or of 
science. But it is perilous to reject the principle 
itself. 

We affirm that, so long as the Presbyterian 
Church permits this slur upon God's redemptive 
purpose in resurrection to remain in their Confes- 
sion — stripping it of all benign effect except in 
the case of the elect — so long she must stand as a 
false witness to the grace and power of God in the 
gospel of His Son. For this matter enters into the 
very heart of the gospel. 

Its glad tidings begin with the announcement of 
Christ's resurrection as a note of great joy to all 
people, and in fulfillment of the ancient promise — 
oft repeated — that in Him all the families of the 
earth shall be blessed. It is, therefore, no light 
matter to strip this primary fact of the gospel, 
upon which rests the hope of the world, of its true 
efficacy and meaning. 

For testifying to the true value and the wide 
scope of this first truth of the gospel, and in the 
endeavor to bring the Church to see it, the writer 
was compelled to withdraw from his chosen Church. 
This intensifies his right to speak this word of 
warning, and to say to these brethren that if they 
continue to pervert and deny this gospel of the 
resurrection, their compromising expedients to 
amend their standards will be futile. God will give 
them no rest, and no prosperity worthy of the 



178 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

name, until they render to Him in this vital matter 
the glory due unto His holy name. 

It is in place finally to say that we have uniformly 
held that resurrection introduces the unjust, not to 
eternal life, but to another life still in bonds, in 
which the weight of previous sinful character must 
tell fearfully against them. There is no possible 
way under this view by which any man can escape 
the consequences of his sins, except as he is saved 
from sin itself and from the bondage of corruption, 
by the power of Christ's resurrection, and in the 
case of the Christless dead, by their subjection to 
the resurrection of judgment. 

The Dead and the Living to be Viewed as 
under a Corporate Eesponsibility. 

In considering re-incarnation as a possible solu- 
tion of the problem of resurrection, our concern is 
for the principle that lies behind it and which is 
essential to a right understanding of Scripture. 
That principle is this : that the generations of the 
living are so connected with the generations of 
the dead as to constitute, together with the latter, 
a Corporate Eace Eesponsibility, and so to act and 
re-act one upon another, that one " without the other 
not be made perfect " ( Heb. 11:40). 

The Brahminical doctrine of re- incarnation may 
be an incomplete and ambiguous expression of the 
principle, to be re-cast in a way that makes room 
for the Christian truth that Jesus is the Saviour of 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 179 

the whole world, and the Emancipator of the entire 
human race from the bondage of corruption. 

In this process of emancipation begun here in 
person, Jesus predicted that His followers should 
do mightier works of healing in His name because 
He was going to the Father. For a little season 
these words were verified. The sick were healed ; 
the sorrowful were made glad ; those who had 
possessions ministered out of their abundance to 
those who had them not ; demons were cast out 
from human bodies which they had deformed and 
debased, and from minds they had bewildered and 
deranged. 

Wherein Lies the Power of Eestoration 
and eecoyery for the human eace. 

Such mighty works must yet again be wrought 
on the earth before its wants shall be relieved and 
its woes banished. For disorder and sin go hand 
in hand, and while education can do much, a power 
is yet needed which can touch the very sources and 
springs of life, and subject the unseen forces of 
nature to the great work of harmonizing man with 
God. That power is the pentecostal effusion of 
the Spirit. 

And therefore the first and greatest present need 
of humanity is a united and consecrated Church 
filled with the Spirit, such knowledge of God 
and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent as shall let 
her into the very secrets of His covenant, and 



180 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

admit her into the recesses of power; so that 
from out the holy place she may come with hands 
laden with blessing for all people, and with power 
to raise up a crippled and burdened and Satan- 
oppressed humanity, which has been so long lying 
at her gates, until it shall walk and leap in the 
strength of God. 

For this ■" the whole creation groaneth and tra- 
vaileth in pain together until now" ( Eom. 8:22 ). 
Are we not wont to overlook the force of the word 
"together" in this passage! The word "creature," 
which occurs repeatedly in this connection, may 
refer either to the human race, or to the whole 
natural system of which it forms a part. 

The Organic Connection between the two 

Wings of Humanity, the Dead and 

the Living. 

In either case we are taught that there is an 
organic connection between all its parts, so that 
the pain of one is the pain of all, and the redemp- 
tion, of which the first-fruits portion are now the sole 
partakers, will be the joy and deliverance of all. 
Such passages as this show us how the individual 
is bound up in the race to which he belongs, and 
how he must take his part in the suffering of the 
whole until the whole is delivered. 

In the light of this truth here taught, our infer- 
ences are justified with regard to the solidarity 
of the race, and the partnership in being and iiL 
destiny between the living and the dead. 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 181 

A friendly correspondent of Words of Reconcilia- 
tion, regretting the necessity of its discontinuance, 
writes : 

u Your journal is absolutely loyal to Holy 
Scripture, and is never offensively dogmatic. 
There is, too, a growth of thought in it, a spirit 
about it, a fairness of statement, and a logic of 
argument pervading it that must commend them- 
selves to every thoughtful mind. They do so com- 
mend themselves. Whatever may be said of the 
' how ? and \ ivhere ? of these great questions, 
your central positions are certainly invulnerable — 
the essentially redemptive character of resurrection, 
the solidarity of the race, of which Jesus the Christ 
is the living head. The fact that but two orders 
of manhood are mentioned in the Scriptures, the 
earthly and the Heavenly, the salvation of men 
through a ' chosen seed,'' and the great purpose of 
God to finally produce on this earth a redeemed 
and immortal race of men, are distinct lines of truth 
that may be followed with safety. " 

In this connection we are warranted in referring 
to a communication in the New York Evangelist 
from a prominent Presbyterian pastor in Albany, 
the Eev. J. H. Ecob, D. D. — one of others desig- 
nated by name " as obnoxious. " He publishes an 
open letter to the late General Assembly, in which 
he boldly accepts the issue and takes up the offered 
challenge. 

" You were very clear and explicit in your de- 
mand; it becomes us ministers to meet you with equal 
openness and decision. If I had any doubt that I 



182 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

was one of the men indicted, that doubt is dissi- 
pated by the promptness of certain religious papers 
to publish my name as one of the men whom your 
resolution intended to strike down. i Thou art the 
man ! ? clears the ground and forces the issue. I 
accept the challenge, my good Assembly. I do not 
propose to step down and out. The majority may 
put me down and out : that is their lookout, not 
mine. Nothing stands in the way of a majority, 
especially a theological majority. " 

He then goes on to defend his position that God 
has not seen fit to construct or to hand down to us 
an absolutely inerrant Bible, and that it is both a 
tyranny and an absurdity to require any one to so 
affirm. At the same time he asserts his strong 
faith in the Scriptures, as an entirely adequate and 
trustworthy revelation from God. 

What he has to say about the binding nature of 
ordination vows and about the obligations of the 
individual minister to his denomination and to the 
whole Church of Christ is good reading : 

< 'We have one other point of contention with you. 
Your resolution is very explicit and solemn respect- 
ing our ordination vows. I wish to remind you 
that our vow not only binds us to what you are 
pleased to announce as a verbally inspired, iner- 
rant and infallible Bible, but also to the belief that 
the Bible contains the system of doctrine taught in 
the Confession of Faith. These two items consti- 
tute one vow, which no power on earth has a right 
to impose, since it binds upon the Word of God a 
purely human system, which you confess to be 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 183 

very imperfect, since you have been at work for 
three years trying to amend it, to make it represent 
what the Church really believes. How can I make 
a vow to accept what changes with every meeting 
of the Assembly! Such a vow I do here and now 
solemnly and forever recant and repudiate. 

" If this shocks you, I answer that I am only 
doing what you have already done. The Presby- 
terian Church is herself, by her official action, un- 
doing the bonds by which her ministers are held, 
since by an overwhelming majority she has declared 
in favor of Eevision. Now, if the Eevised Confes- 
sion is taught in the Scripture, then the Old Con- 
fession is not ; you may take either horn you choose. 
If both the Old and the New Confessions are in the 
Bible, then the Eevision amounts to nothing. If 
the Old was in the Bible and we have revised any- 
thing out of it, then we have revised something out 
of the Bible. And if it should come to pass, which 
is more than likely, that both the Old and the New 
Confessions shall be laid aside, and a brief and 
Scriptural statement of belief be adopted instead, 
then what has become of your ordination vow 1 
My dear Assembly, believe me, it has died by your 
own hand. Eevision has killed it. 

" I must have a word more with you. Your 
resolution makes much of l honor.' This is a 
strong appeal. But your resolution fails to make 
an important distinction, that is, between the 
Church of Christ and the Presbyterian denomina- 
tion. I was called of God, I was called to preach 
the gospel in His Church. The matter of denom- 
ination was purely an accident of birth, or training, 
or personal preference, which in no degree takes 
from my higher obligation to Him who is the Head 
of the Church. But your resolution makes of our 
denomination simply a political party with a plat- 



184 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

form, and says virtually, i If yon do not like the 
platform, go to some other party ! ' 

u Holding a far higher conception of the Church, 
let me tell you frankly, yet kindly, that you take 
too much upon you when you assume to dic- 
tate to every Presbyterian minister when he shall 
step down and out. I reverse your code of honor. 
I am in honor bound to the Church of Him who re- 
deemed me and called me to the ministry. By 
birth and training and preference I am in this de- 
nomination ; as one of its ministers I am bound in 
honor to stand here and do everything in my power 
to save it from being an instrument of tyranny and 
oppression, and to keep it pure and holy as a part 
of the One Body of Christ." 

He then closes this interesting letter with this 
confession of faith. 

u I believe with all my soul in the Word of God 
as an entirely adequate and trustworthy disclosure 
of the divine mind and heart. I rest the weight of 
my immortal life upon it, not only without doubt 
or fear, but in inward triumph and abounding joy. 

u I believe with all my soul in Him who in the 
Scriptures is set forth as the Eedeemer of men. 
He is to me not only the Saviour from my sins, but 
my Friend, my Lover, and my Beloved, in whom 
my soul delighteth. 

" I believe with all my soul in His Church, the 
Kingdom of Heaven on earth, His Body, the full- 
ness of Him who filleth all in all. He Himself is 
its glorious Head, He Himself is the present Lord, 
the mighty Leader and Defender of His Church. 

i 1 1 believe with all my soul in the eternal life 
brought to life in Him. The Lamb's company is 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 185 

my company. I make haste with joy unspeakable 
toward the day of his appearing. 

" Now, if there is not room for such a man in the 
Presbyterian Church, I assure you I shall not step 
down and out to find room for him, but I pledge 
you that so far as in me lies, and by the grace of 
God, I will help to make room for him in just that 
place to which he has been called, a Presbyterian 
pulpit." 

The foregoing letter of Dr. Ecob brings to mind 
the serious question forced upon us when we with- 
drew from the Presbyterian Church. The relation 
of a minister in that body is not precisely what it 
was before the issue of Eevision was raised. By 
tolerating this discussion and actually taking steps 
to introduce important changes in the Confession, 
the whole question of subscription to the Standards 
assumes a different aspect. The Church itself has 
loosened the bonds. We are free to say that we 
have serious doubts whether the course we took 
then would be the one to take now. 

We recognize as strongly as does Dr. Ecob, that 
the vow a Presbyterian minister takes to promote 
the peace and purity of the Church binds him to 
seek its purity in doctrine, to testify against any 
error that may have crept into it, and to build it 
up, with "all saints," into the unity of the faith. 
In our own case, we maintained that it was this 
motive which led us to expose the errors in the 
Eschatologyof the Presbyterian Church, and to pro- 
pose action toward their removal. And we threw 



186 THE ECLECTIC ESCHATOLOGY OF 

upon the Presbytery the whole responsibility of de- 
ciding whether we could continue to prosecute such 
a work within the limits of the denomination or 
whether we should withdraw. 

If any mistake was then made, the responsibility 
rests with the body that advised us to withdraw, 
unless we could consent to refrain from publishing 
these views. Under present circumstances Dr. 
Ecob is probably right in maintaining his purpose 
to hold on and to fight his battle out within the 
limits of his Church. Had the circumstances been 
the same at the time of our action, we should 
probably have done the same thing. 

And yet we made no mistake at the time. For 
then no such relief to one's conscience in subscrip- 
tion had been afforded, and no such liberty of 
speech had been tolerated as now prevails. Even 
yet, on the questions we have raised in Eschatology, 
few in the Church have dared to raise a voice. The 
Church is still cramped and dwarfed under bondage 
to the harsh formulas of its Standards, upon the 
question of eternal punishment, which is described 
as inflicted after resurrection, and as being an end- 
less torment of body and soul without intermission, 
in hell- fire with the devil and his angels forever. 

It seemed to us, then, that freedom to discuss 
that question for the good of the Church at large, and 
especially for the good of the Presbyterian Church, 
required that some one should take an absolutely 
unfettered position, and assert for himself a free- 
dom which was then, and is even still, impossible 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 187 

within it. We have seen no reason since to doubt 
the truth and propriety of that position. 

We abide in supreme loyalty to our divine Lord 
and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and in cordial attach- 
ment to the Presbyterian Church while abiding in 
that same loyalty and devotion to our common 
Head. 



AN ORIGINAL THESIS ON ESCHATOLOGY. 



By the Author under Keview, 
Rev. Lewis C. Baker. 



The sun is fixed, 
And the infinite magnificence of heaven 
Within the reach of every human eye ; 
The sleepless ocean murmurs for all ears; 
The vernal field infuses fresh delight 
Into all hearts. Throughout the world of sense. 
Even as an object is sublime or fair, 
That object is laid open to the view 
Without reserve or veil; and as a power 
Is salutary, or an influence sweet, 
Are each and all able to perceive 
That power, that influence, by impartial law. 
Gifts nobler are vouchsafed alike to all; 
Reason, — and with that reason, smiles and tears; 
Imagination, freedom in the will, 
Conscience to judge and check; and death to be 
Foretasted, immortality presumed. 

— Wordsworth's Poem, The Excursion. 



THE BASIS FOR A NEW THEOLOGY IN A 
NEW ESCHATOLOGY. 

A Thesis, by the Rev. L. C. Baker, 

Late Editor of Words of Reconciliation, Philadelphia. 

At the bequest of my friend, the Bev. Dr. 
Cheever, I undertake to supplement the digest of 
my views,* which he, upon his own motion, has 
thought fit to prepare, with a statement of the 
principle which, in my judgment, must guide the 
Presbyterian Church in the attempt now being 
made to re-construct her system of doctrine. Such 
a re- statement is required in order that this vener- 
able Church may keep pace with the progressive 
knowledge of Holy Scripture, and with her own 
growing intelligence and spiritual perception of the 
ways of God in nature and toward mankind. 

It was to aid in this work, and to leave myself 
untrammeled in prosecuting it, that I felt com- 
pelled to withdraw from the Church, after having 



* The reader will have noticed that at various points 
these views have been enlarged by him on his proprio 
motu. 



192 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

submitted to it — in the way it provides — the ques- 
tion as to whether I could be allowed to prosecute 
such a work within its limits. 

Before leaving, however, I sought to arouse the 
attention of that Church to the importance of mov- 
ing in this matter, by divers publications, and by 
an effort to induce the Presbytery to overture the 
General Assembly, requesting that body to institute 
measures for revising the Eschatology of its Confes- 
sion of Faith, For the most serious defect in that 
Confession lies in the statement of its doctrine of 
future retribution. It is this which is at the bottom 
of the existing widespread demand for its amend- 
ment ; although by a strange fatuity or dread, the 
attempt to revise has thus far been characterized by 
an evasion of this vital point. No distinguished 
leader has yet ventured to put his finger on this, 
the really sore spot in the system, the seat of its 
disquiet and distress. 

I have been at pains to show that the radical 
trouble with that Confession, and with the other 
symbols of the Eeformed faith, is that their authors 
have been betrayed into a misconception of the 
meaning and scope of the fundamental doctrine of 
Christianity — the resurrection of the dead. 

Let us look, for example, at the Westminster 
Confession. In the answers to Questions 88 and 
89 of the Larger Catechism, it *is affirmed that, after 
the souls of the wicked have been suffering in the 
torments of hell, their bodies are to be raised up at 
the last day to be reunited to these damned souls, 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 193 

and that, immediately after their resurrection, they 
are to be judged and again cast into hell, "to be 
punished with unspeakable torments both of body 
and soul, with the devil and his angels forever.' 7 

That this is a wholly erroneous, not to say a 
monstrous, perversion of the truth, is at once 
apparent when we consider that the appointed 
penalty of sin is death, that the provision to 
recover mankind from death is a redemptive one, 
and a supreme manifestation of the grace of God in 
Christ. By a patient study of the Old Testament, 
we discover the thread of this "hope toward God" 
running through all its pages, "that there shall be 
a resurrection both of the just and of the unjust'* 
(Acts 24 : 15). 

This is the bedrock on which the whole fabric 
of revelation rests. And when intelligently per- 
ceived we see how impossible it is that the few 
passages in the New Testament relied on to teach 
the doctrine of everlasting punishment — and which 
from our new point of view become at once capa- 
ble of a very different meaning — can set aside 
the force of this underlying principle of all 
Scripture, that the resurrection of the dead is a 
gracious recovery from that destruction due to man 
for sin, and which would have been total and final, 
had not the power of God reached down in Christ 
to recover the race from this pit of death. 

This fundamental mistake in the traditional 
eschatology, has vitiated the whole system of 
theology of which it forms a part. It has given us 



194 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

a false doctrine of God, which represents Him as 
at variance with His own works, and as at war 
within His own nature, between the claims of His 
justice and His love ; a false doctrine of His 
government, of which His sovereignty is made the 
spring and centre, to the obscuration of His love ; 
sl false doctrine of Christ, by which He is made a 
bargaining person in the Godhead rather than the 
divine-human Eevealer of the infinite love and 
kindness of God our Father toward man. 

It has given also an unworthy doctrine of the 
atonement, by which the government of God is repre- 
sented as capricious, imposing penalties which were 
not to be executed, and arranging to set aside its 
enormous penalty for sin — an eternal hell — by ac- 
cepting an enormous ransom paid to buy us off 
from the just consequences of our sins. It has given 
a defective doctrine of election, in that it makes the 
loving purpose of God, in choosing a first-fruits 
company as heirs of salvation, to terminate upon 
themselves ; as if there were no harvest of the 
world to follow the first-fruits gathering ; and no 
ultimate purpose of mercy toward the later-born in 
the choice of the Church of the First-born. 

Such being the fundamental mistake of the old 
theology, we are prepared to discover the primary 
principles upon which a revision must proceed. 

1. We must begin by accepting the statement of 
Scripture that God is the Creator and Father of all 
mankind, made in His image, and that man did not 
cease to be His child when he fell into sin. 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTUEE. 195 

2. We must recognize that the root and ground 
of man's being are in God , and that therefore he has 
a germinal divine nature which is the essential 
man, and in which his true and permanent individu- 
ality resides. This essential man, as born of God, 
cannot sin and cannot die. 

3. We must learn to distinguish between this 
essential man and the imperfect and perishable 
forms of manhood in which it seeks personal 
expression (in its progress toward the perfect 
form), — between esse and existere. The individual 
— that which cannot be divided — is. The personal 
— that through which the individual seeks objective 
expression {persona) — exists. 

4. The goal toward which the divine energy is 
working in creation and redemption, is the final in- 
vestiture of man as the son of God with a person- 
ality which shall be true to his essential nature — 
the perfect expression and dwelling-place of God. 

5. The outward personal man, built up in this 
system of creation, through the energy of the, in- 
dwelling divine nature, develops in the line of evil, 
not because its origin is evil, but because the sys- 
tem to which it belongs has not yet reached its per- 
fect state, and because, for the ends of his discipline 
as a moral agent and as its future lord, the man 
must make progress with it toward perfection. 
Man therefore falls into sin, which is lawlessness, 
and the objective personality into which he devel- 
ops while under this law of sin in his members^ 
must perish from the way. 



196 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

6. The unvarying law of death as the wages of 
sin is thus seen to apply to this personal and ob- 
jective man, who develops a self-consciousness of 
his own, and in whom, when steeped in sin, the true 
being of man remains submerged and sub-con- 
scious. 

7. From this point of view it is seen that the 
law of God which adjudges man to death for sin, is 
never set aside. Under His government no penal- 
ties are affixed but such as are perfectly just and 
good. None therefore can be revoked. Atone- 
ment does not provide for the remission of penal- 
ties, but for the remission of sins. The essential 
man, being divine, needs no atonement. He is, in 
his very nature, at-one with God. 

8. The work of Christ in atonement is to liber- 
ate the true being of man from its bondage to cor- 
ruption in this present world- system, to hand over 
to judgment and death the evil personality into 
which man has developed under that system, and 
to provide for the new creation of man, in a form 
of personal manhood suited to his essential nature. 
This is the meaning and effect of His own death 
and resurrection. The natural manhood in the 
fashion of which He was formed, but under all the 
disadvantages of which He was able to live without 
sin, was surrendered to death in Him, as it must 
be in the case of all men. 

Coming into sympathy with Him in this death 
unto sin, we become partakers also of the power of 
His resurrection. For He, the Sinless One, in His 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 197 

resurrection attained to that perfected form of di- 
vine humanity which is the personal, ever-living 
expression of God, and which is invested with the 
authority and made heir to the estate of God. And 
so He became a second Head of humanity, or rath- 
er we should say, He realized as Man the headship 
over all things to which man was appointed from 
the foundation of the world. Thus He became the 
fountain-head of this perfected humanity to all the 
sons of men. 

His office-work as the Atoner or Eeconciler of 
man to God, is, therefore, a perpetual one. By His 
Spirit He quickens into activity and self- conscious- 
ness and control the slumbering divinity in man. 
He imparts to this essential man the power to grow 
up into the maturity of a son of God. As invested 
with all power in this created system, He tranquil- 
izes and controls all its processes to the production 
of that perfected form of personal manhood of which 
He is the first-fruits, and in the fashion of which 
glorified embodiment we shall appear with Him, 
and which shall be the temple of God on earth and 
in Heaven. Thus is He bringing mankind into at- 
one-mentwith God. 

9. The redemption of man is therefore the ran- 
som of that which is divine in him from bondage, 
the liberation of his true being from the power of 
evil, and his endowment with new vital energy 
from God to develop into a personality which shall 
be His express image, and so reach the true end 
of his being. 



198 LEWIS C. BAKER'S thesis on 

10. It is thus seen that while the individual 
man is immortal, the continuity of his personal be- 
ing, the objective expression of the real man, goes 
with character. Those features of his present per- 
sonality which come under the control of the divine 
spirit within him will abide, while those that are 
the product of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the 
eyes and the pride of life, are tiot of the Father, but 
of the world. "And the world passeth away and 
the lust thereof : only he that doeth the will of God 
abideth forever. " 

11. Man is made up of body, soul and spirit. 
The essential man is spirit, for God is Spirit. 
This man requires for his expression, body and 
soul. Soul therefore, with body, pertains to the 
objective man. A complete loss of personality is 
the destruction of both body and soul — not of the 
essential self, but of the self-hood, acquired by the 
evil personality which must be destroyed. This 
must explain to us the common terms by which 
the punishment of sin is uniformly set forth in 
Scripture. These are terms of death and destruc- 
tion. "All the wicked will He destroy." 

12. The Church cannot arrive at the true doc- 
trine of future punishment until she ceases to pal- 
ter with these terms, and accepts them as teaching 
that in the sense here set forth, the objective per- 
sonal man dies and is eternally destroyed, except 
so far as the divine nature, which is Christ within 
him, has controlled the elements of his personality 
and fashioned them for its own uses. 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 199 

13. The Church will then cease also to pervert 
the meaning and intent of resurrection, which in 
the divine economy is always redemptive and re- 
storative. As punishment for sin requires the con- 
signment to death of the evil personality that en- 
swathes the divine nature in man, so resurrection 
is the liberation of that nature, and its enduement 
with new energy and fresh opportunity to take on 
the kind of personal manhood suited to itself. The 
term resurrection is therefore applied in the New 
Testament to various stages in this process. It 
describes the present quickening of man out of 
death in trespasses and sins, and also the final and 
complete transformation of his objective manhood 
into the perfect image of God. 

14. The promised l ' resurrection of the unjust ' J 
is the intervention of divine grace and power in 
their behalf after death has done upon them its 
appointed work. It cannot restore their sinful per- 
sonality, but it must liberate their essential man- 
hood for a fresh opportunity to press forward to 
the goal of being. Hence all the hopes of salvation 
for Israel and for the human race as outlined in 
Scripture, connect themselves with the promised 
provision to raise the dead. It was a provision 
of blessing for " all the families of the earth, ?? of 
which " all " the dead form the immensely major 
part. 

15. The " resurrection of judgment/' spoken of 
in John 5 : 21-25, unto which those " that have 
done evil " are brought forth, implies that there 



200 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

has been such judgment of the man in death that 
he must enter upon the new career stripped of all 
the treasures of his former life. I have said that 
continuity of personal (not individual) identity 
goes with character. Just so far as men have "done 
good," to that extent they will enter into life : so 
far as they have "done ill," they will be cast 
away. This is the distinct test by which they are 
sorted for " the resurrection of life," or "of judg- 
ment." 

But, further, judgment must also await the evil 
class, inasmuch as the divine spirit in man failed 
to form them into temples fit for his abode. There 
would therefore be a necessity for their further 
judgment and discipline under the yoke of bondage 
to the creature. This present flesh and blood na- 
ture is the appointed arena on which man must 
win the crown of life. Scripture knows of but two 
forms of personal manhood, the earthy and the 
Heavenly. Men who are not fitted to take on the 
image of the Heavenly must remain on the plane of 
the earthy. The resurrection of judgment seems 
to involve a return to further judgment under the 
conditions of this earthly life. Possibly some oth- 
er earth may furnish the conditions for such trial. 
In my judgment all the conditions for it exist here 
and are found in the present constitution of the hu- 
man race. 

16. Whatever is true in the old and wide-spread 
race- belief in reincarnation, will come in at this 
point to indicate the probable form of the resur- 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 201 

Tection of the unjust. This method is one which 
both reason and science would suggest for the re- 
turn to life, and for the advance along the scale of 
being of at least those immense masses of low- 
down men, who have lived on this planet from the 
days of the cave-dwellers, through all the grades of 
savagery and barbarism that still prevail in the 
dark places of the earth. 

If evolution ever makes good the hypothesis that 
these have come up to manhood along the line of 
animal life, their progress to higher forms of man- 
hood should proceed by the same law of re-embod- 
iment, which could carry with it personal identity 
and self- consciousness only after the spiritual na- 
ture had been evoked. And while Scripture does 
not directly teach that this is the method of the in- 
ferior resurrection, it gives strong hints of it in 
that it connects all its hope for the future of these 
masses, with the preservation of a seed and the 
succession of generations. The prophets place 
even the hope of Israel on this basis (Ps. 102 : 24- 
28. Isa. 51 : 6-8). 

As to how far this law of rebirth into earthly life 
applies to the higher grades of humanity, in which 
the germs of spiritual life and the fruits of moral 
conduct appear apart from conscious knowledge of 
Christ, may be an open question. We may hope 
that, at least, men who, as did Cornelius, fear God 
and work righteousness, so far yield to the control 
of their diviner nature that further development 
toward likeness to God, may be reached in the fu- 



202 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

ture state, without a necessity for their return to 
the bondage and trial of the earthly state. 

There are many indications in Scripture to the 
effect that, intermediate between the physical and 
spiritual planes of being, there is a psychical realm 
from which those u who lose their souls " and be- 
come outcasts, are returned to the earthly life, 
while those whose souls are quickened into spirit- 
ual life and bear the marks of goodness and virtue, 
are saved from destruction, and are advanced to- 
ward spiritual perfection and final glorification 
without the necessity for another incarnation and 
further u judgment in the flesh. " 

17. We arrive thus at a sure ground upon which 
we may hold fast to all Scripture teaching concern- 
ing retribution for sin, and apply it to the con- 
sciences, the hopes and fears of men, without par- 
alyzing their moral nature in the effort to conceive 
of a God whose name is Love, and yet whose ven- 
geance can only be appeased by the infliction of 
eternal misery upon many of His creatures. 

The right knowledge of God, in which standeth 
our eternal life, is impossible on such a basis. 
The words of Christ about hell and its quenchless 
fires, about the loss of the soul and of self, about 
an everlasting Kolasis from His presence, are all 
brought under the one category of the appointed 
penalty for sin, which is death, and which is visit- 
ed upon the objective personal existence into whick 
man develops as a sinner and apart from God. 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 203 

While the provision that all who died in Adam 
are to be raised to life again in Christ, is seen to 
be the gracious work of Him who spake by the 
mouth of all His holy prophets since the world be- 
gan. His word is fulfilled that the Lord is good 
to all ; His tender mercies are over all His works ; 
He will not keep His anger forever. And the gos- 
pel of His Son becomes, indeed, " glad tidings of 
great joy which shall be to all people.' 7 

There remains another line of Scripture teaching* 
bearing upon this whole subject which must not be 
overlooked. The dealings of God with the human 
race and the final destiny of mankind cannot be 
understood, without an inquiry into the principle 
of heredity and of the organic constitution of the 
race, by which it becomes possessed of a corporate 
life and responsibility. 

Under this head we find these principles taught 
or implied. 

1. As man is possessed of a double nature, the 
one divine and essential, the other human and per- 
sonal, so there are two representative heads of the 
race. The first in the order of being and of crea- 
ation is Christ Jesus, " the Son of Man who is in 
Heaven. " He was the eternal Logos, the Beveal- 
er of God, the ideal Man for whose enthronement 
the universe was built. He is thus " the Beginning 
of the Creation of God, the First-born of every 
creature." And He is the head of every man (I. 
Cor. 11 : 3), because all men as made in the image 



.20* LEWIS c. BAKER'S thesis on 

of God possess in germ the divine nature, and are 
capable of becoming sons of God. 

But in the lower and natural order the Adam is 
the first head of the race. c ' Howbeit that which 
is first is natural and afterwards that which is 
spiritual." It is a radical mistake in theology to 
hold that either of these is the head of only a por- 
tion of mankind, as do those who say that the all 
in Christ who are to be made alive, are only those 
who are saints in Him. Scripture plainly teaches 
that each, the first man and the second man, is 
head of the whole race. The Christ, however, is its 
head as the source of that divine essential manhood 
which is the root of being in every man, and in 
whom it is now invested with a perfect personality. 
The Adam is the head of that existent manhood 
which on this earthly plane is struggling toward 
this perfected image of God. 

2. This principle of corporate union is true not 
only of the race as a whole : it is true also of na- 
tions and households. In the Old Testament espe- 
cially, salvation is viewed not so much as reaching 
individuals as families and kindreds and nations. 
The destiny of the individual is linked in with that 
of his people. The nation is viewed as a unit in 
life, in responsibility and destiny. 

This is the only adequate explanation of the si- 
lence in the Old Testament in respect to a future 
life. The faith of the pious Israelite was stayed by 
the promise of God to preserve to him a seed. The 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 205 

continuity of the nation, the succession of its gen- 
erations, was the assurance to him of future bless- 
ing. Instead of the fathers should be the children, 
and in the blessing of subsequent generations, the 
generations who had preceded them, and who had 
died receiving not the promise, should share. The 
apostles of our Lord, especially in their addresses 
to their own countrymen, recognized this charac- 
teristic feature of ancient faith and hope, and 
showed how Jesus Christ was raised from the dead 
to confirm these promises made to the fathers. 

3. The principle of continuity in life and des- 
tiny between generations is plainly brought out in 
the second commandment, and it underlies the rev- 
elation of the name of God to Moses in answer to 
his request, "I beseech Thee, show me Thy glory " 
(Ex. 34 : 7). But under this law the potency for 
good was to be vastly greater than the potency for 
evil. While the iniquity of the fathers was to be 
visited upon the children unto the third and fourth 
generation, the mercy upon them that love and obey 
Him was to reach down to thousands of genera- 
tions^ — that is, the results of good conduct were to 
be perpetual. 

4. The principle of continuity in reward and 
punishment would be inoperative for the purposes 
to which it was to be applied, unless connection in 
the chain of being is somehow preserved between 
generations past and future, that is, between the 
living and the dead. The law which prevails in 



206 LEWIS C. BAKER'S THESIS ON 

the lower kingdoms of life must prevail here also. 
Vanished lives must be gathered up for preserva- 
tion and reproduction in a seed. 

5. It is by this law that the Christ and His 
members become the seed of blessing to all the 
race. While all humanity was represented in Him, 
so that His victory over death must bring ultimate 
release to all the generations of the dead, each in 
its own order, it was especially true of Him that 
He represented the pious dead who had waited for 
the consolation of Israel. His victory led their 
captivity captive and set them free. And now He 
lives again, especially in the members of His body 
to whom He is the Life- giver, and who, both in 
Heaven and on earth, are the eyes and hands and 
feet through which He executes His offices of pow- 
er and grace. 

6. The resurrection from the dead, at least, of the 
sainted members of His body, has already been ac- 
complished. The New Testament speaks of those 
who were to sleep for a time before entering upon 
the activities of new and immortal life. But emi- 
nent saints, like Paul, expected that no interval 
would elapse between their departure from the 
earthly body and their investiture with the Heav- 
enly. This class of risen men, under Christ their 
Head, now carry forward His redemptive work for 
humanity. They are ministers to and succorers 
of their brethren, still suffering and struggling un- 
der the burdens and temptations of the earthly life. 
They are the inspirers of the noble works done to 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 207 

mitigate the evils under which humanity suffers, to 
purify the fountains of its social and national life, 
and to uplift it along the path of progress. 

7. This principle of the organic unity of the 
race requires us also to regard each living genera- 
tion of mankind as fraught with the being and 
destiny of their ancestral dead. They inherit their 
traits, their virtues and vices, their peculiar types 
of life and manhood ; and so they fight over again 
their battle with evil. The living thus take up the 
cause of the dead and carry it on toward victory. 

No principle in Scripture or in human experi- 
ence is more plain than that the curse and pain of 
evil go over from generation to generation. 
There is no balance for this feature in the divine 
economy, unless blessings may be transmitted 
backward as the curse is transmitted forward. 
Upon no other principle can the primary and oft- re- 
peated promise be made good, " In thee and in 
thy seed shall all the families of the earth be 
blessed. " The major part of these families is 
among the dead. But it is the law of all creature 
life that the higher forms must carry in their ad- 
vance a burden from the lower forms and lift them 
up. It is in this way that the whole creation 
waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. 

8. An additional and higher motive is thus 
held before men in the gospel. They are urged to 
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, not only that 
they may secure salvation for themselves, but that 
they may become the channels of it to their kindred 



208 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

and to their fellowmen, living and dead. Here is 
the clue to the meaning of that obscure saying of 
St. Paul: " Why, then, am I baptized in behalf of 
the dead !» 

9. This conception of the gospel is the one most 
of all needed to give it success among the heathen, 
among whom this idea of a connection in interest 
and destiny with their ancestral dead has long 
borne sway. A gospel that holds out no hope for 
their kindred who passed on before them, and of 
whom their own lives are a continuation, will never 
win the heathen at large to Christ. It is vain for 
our creed revisers to wrestle with the problem of 
their future until this principle is recognized. 

10. The totality of the body of humanity is 
always represented on the earthly plane, and is 
focused in the existing generation of men. There 
are indeed heights of spiritual being above that 
plane, and depths beneath it. The holy dead occupy 
these heights, but they are ever seeking to lift up 
their brethren who are struggling on the plane be- 
neath them. To this end they maintain spiritual 
union with them, as Christ their Head declared 
that He would maintain spiritual union with all 
His disciples to the end of the world. And those 
on the earthly plane are also weighted with 
the burden of those who have dropped out of this 
earthly life into the depths beneath them. 

The Hades where are confined the spirits of the 
captive dead, is thus ever coming to manifestation, 
in these depths of human misery and sin which lie 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 209 

all around us. One can gaze into the precincts of 
hell by a look into the prisons and hospitals and 
slums and lunatic asylums, in which are gathered 
the battered and diseased bodies and souls of men. 
The dead, who seem to have sunk out of the sphere 
of this conflict, are grouped here with the living. 
And this not merely in the way of retribution, but 
they are ever seeking to use these living organisms 
as a ladder, by which to climb up out of their ban- 
ishment and darkness into the light and hope of 
another embodied life. 

This is their only way of hope for release from 
the bonds of death. The earthly state is thus, 
always the focus of this strife between two worlds. 
Thanks be to God who giveth to men the victory 
through Jesus Christ our Lord, it is also the arena 
on which light is always triumphing over darkness 
and life over death, and on which the God of peace 
shall finally and forever bruise Satan under our con- 
quering feet. 

11. The mysteries of retribution and reward, 
of Heaven and hell, of the reign and judgment of 
the Christ, and of the resurrection of the dead, — all 
lie embosomed in these heights and depths of being 
of which man is the centre. When we come to 
fully know man, his place in the creation and in 
the great plan of God, his double nature, the destiny 
of the earthly man, as the husk and shell within 
which the true being of man is nurtured and trained, 
but which as chaff must in the end be burned ; and 
when we know also the immense significance of 



210 LEWIS c. bakee's thesis on 

this earthly life as the battle ground on which we 
win our own way to Heavenly manhood, and help 
our wounded and fallen brethren on the way, — then 
will life and its opportunities as set forth in the 
gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, be seen in 
their true light, and the value of His great salvation 
will be appreciated. 

12. The coming of the Christ and of His King- 
dom for which we wait, is not the downburst upon 
the world of new wonders from a distant sphere, 
but the unveiling before our eyes of the won- 
ders in the midst of which we now live and 
move. These are now hidden from us behind the 
clouds of our own ignorance and earthiness. The 
more fully we recognize and bring out in self-asser- 
tion the spiritual nature which we have of God, 
the more will it become a mirror in which we shall 
behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord, and be 
changed into the same image from glory to glory 
as by the Spirit of the Lord. 

We have seen that the imperfections of man's 
present personality as expressive of his divine na- 
ture, are due to ignorance of God, to unlawful at- 
tempts at expansion and achievement and posses- 
sion apart from God, and to his consequent inability 
to subdue the powers of nature to his service and 
control. Even these real friends are turned into 
enemies His advance to the perfect form of being 
must, therefore, begin by the recognition and as- 
sertion of that nature within him which is born of 
God, and which overcometh the world. 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 211 

13. The transformation of the race from the 
plane of the earthy to that of the Heavenly man- 
hood is gradual ; it proceeds by stages : Christ, 
the First-fruits ; afterwards they that are of the 
Christ at His parousia, or manifested presence. 
This presence He taught us, however, was not to 
be wholly of the future. It was to be a present 
knowledge of the Father, a present in-dwelling 
strength and peace and joy. So far as manifested 
it must now work changes in the bodies and souls, 
the whole personality of men. 

This transforming power has been hindered and 
quenched, even in the Church, by a darkening 
within her of the true knowledge of God and the 
true being and destiny of man. This better knowl- 
edge is even now breaking on the world, and ere 
long there shall be the open vision and the opened 
Heavens, out of which shall come down that new 
order in which the dwelling place of God shall be 
with men, and there shall be no more curse nor 
sorrow nor pain nor death, for the former things 
shall pass away. 

14. We may, therefore, expect that as the true 
knowledge of God and of man's relation to Him are 
increased, and as men yield themselves in heart 
and body to its transforming power, that the fore- 
gleams of the power and coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ which were shed down upon the earth just 
after He ascended, and the signs of which were 
seen in the triumphs of His gospel, in the healing 
of the sick and the raising of the dead, in mastery 



212 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

over the forces of nature and the obstacles of human 
wickedness, — will be repeated and multiplied until 
they brighten into the perfect day. 

To sum up these principles :— God at first created 
man for sonship and immortality, endowing him 
with a spiritual nature in which resides his perma- 
nent selfhood; which survives all changes, and which 
must finally find its perfect personal expression in 
that form of divine manhood which is the image of 
the invisible God. To reach this goal, however, 
this essential man must needs pass through suc- 
cessive stages of objective expression up to that of 
perfect personality. 

The whole story of man's sin and punishment by 
death and final destruction from the presence of the 
Lord, relates not to the essential man, born out of 
God, but to the existent .man, which is the husk in 
which God's image is enshrined, and which, as the 
image matures, must be cast off and burnt up as 
chaff, except so far as it can furnish material to be 
wrought into that image. The doctrine of the res- 
urrection of the dead reveals the gracious method 
by which this process of transformation and growth 
toward God is advanced. Eesurrection is always 
and essentially liberating and redemptive. 

There is nothing unscriptural and certainly 
nothing unscientific in the view that the inferior 
grade of resurrection, defined as that of the unjust, 
may take the form of re-incarnation, or re-birth 
into earthy manhood, for the ends of further judg- 
ment under its conditions of creature bondage* 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 213 

The higher stages of this process require a resur- 
rection out into the higher stages of life and do- 
minion than this earthly stage affords. 

An elect seed of mankind, of which Christ is the 
Head, have already reached the highest stage of 
resurrection-life and power, while others of this 
high class are in various stages of progress toward 
it. A power of deliverance for the race resides in 
them and becomes effective, because the human race 
has been constituted one organism whose solidarity 
is such that it cannot be broken by death. The 
saintly and glorified class are, therefore, able to 
still act in and upon and through the living gener- 
ations of mankind for the perfection of the whole ; 
while those living on the earth must still hold 
within the sphere of their being the past genera- 
tions of the dead, thus preserving them for re-em- 
bodiment, and furnishing them the ladder by which 
they must climb up again into the light of life. 

In this way through the power of Christ's resur- 
rection, extending itself through ever widening 
circles, the whole race will be finally lifted up into 
the light and life of God, and the earth with its 
heavens become His temple. 

But this universal hope, so far as it is cherished 
by the earthy man, must always be limited in its 
application by the fact that his existing personality 
can survive and be wrought into the structure. of 
God's temple, only so far as it can furnish materials 
suited to it ; that, therefore, all that now enters into 
his objective manhood — even its personal self- con- 



214 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

sciousness — can survive the ordeal of judgment^ 
only so far as the divine nature has been formed 
within him, and has appropriated to its uses and 
control these life-treasures. 

To my mind the above outline furnishes the true 
principles, by which the reformation now going on 
in theology must be guided, in order to reach sure 
ground. We obtain here a firm basis of adjustment 
between the conflicting views which have so long 
distracted Christendom, and divided it into hostile 
camps. 

A way of reconciliation is found between or- 
thodoxy and heterodoxy ; between the Catholic 
faith and the truths arrived at through the forms 
of reason and the study of nature ; between the 
universalistic and the retributive sides of Scripture 
teaching ; between the doctrine of the conditional 
immortality of man and the view that he is inher- 
ently immortal ; between the claim of science that 
man is a product of evolution, and the Scripture 
statement that he is a special creation or emana- 
tion from God ; between the doctrine of the divine 
unity as comprehending the eternal sonship of 
Christ, and of a divine-human personality mani- 
fested on the platform of creation and in time ; be- 
tween the doctrine that He is the Saviour of all 
men, giving Himself a ransom for all, and the dec- 
laration, " All the wicked will he destroy;" be- 
tween the view that the power and coming of His 
Kingdom is the crisis and event of the future, and the 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 215 

view that His Kingdom is already here, and that His 
reign and judgment are facts of the living present ; 
between the view that the resurrection of the dead is 
yet a " hope " and the view that, as the divine pro- 
cess for transforming men into the likeness of God, it 
has begun and is now going on. 

In the light of these principles there need be no 
further controversy over the question of future pro- 
bation. It is seen that there is truth on both sides 
of it, and that both have something to contribute 
to the final statement. Whatever future probation 
there is must take place here in this sphere of 
earth and time. The importance of the earthly life 
as the period during which the gospel is made 
known to men, and as affording the only conditions 
under which they can work out their salvation, is 
made clear. On the other hand, it is seen that the 
period of a single earthly life cannot exhaust the 
possibilities of God's gracious dealings with men 
unto salvation. 

These principles furnish also the ground upon 
which the men of science who find in their realm 
no hope of a future life, and who are alienated from 
Christianity, or at least from its long-received in- 
terpretations, may be won back to faith in Him in 
whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and 
knowledge. 

The theosophist can find in this view of resur- 
rection room for something akin to his doctrine of 
karma and of re-incarnation. The evolutionist is 
given room for all that real science teaches of prog- 



216 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

ress along the scale of life from the animal to the 
human, and from the human to the perfected man, 
the seat of intelligence and power and dominion in 
this created system. 

The " survival of the fittest " finds its highest 
illustration in the formation and permanence of a 
divine personality in man. The positivist finds 
provision for his faith, that the individual is per- 
petuated in the race, and in an immortality of in- 
fluence along the chain of being. The Christian 
scientist finds room for all his fondest hopes for 
the renovation of humanity, through the assertion 
of the God-consciousness in man. 

These principles present also the true doctrine of 
the universal Fatherhood of God and brotherhood 
of man. God is seen to be the Father of all men 
in that His being lies at the root and ground of 
their being, and constitutes them in essence sons 
of God, but not their Father in the sense that all 
the imperfect forms of humanity, through which 
the divine-human nature seeks to express itself in 
its progress toward the perfect form, are expres- 
sions of God. 

And all men are seen to be brothers in the sense 
that all are the offspring of God, but some in lower 
ranks of existence and tutelage ; so that on this 
objective plane all are not entitled to claim equality 
in rank and respect. But the altruistic claim is 
not thereby weakened, but established. For they 
who are far down the scale of human brotherhood 
present the stronger claim for help, for wise and 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 217 

tender treatment under their infirmities and temp- 
tations, a large part of the burden of which has 
come to them from the past ; so that they can 
struggle out into higher conditions, only through 
the help of those who have themselves reached 
those heights, and who thence extend to them the 
helping hand. 

It is seen also that the only way of advance 
along the scale of life, and the only path to that 
enduring personality which is crowned with life 
eternal, is this way of mutual burden-bearing, of 
self-sacrifice for others' good, even as Christ pleased 
not Himself. Indeed, the claim which the low and 
suffering ranks of our fellowmen make upon those 
who have reached higher levels will never be 
properly understood and dealt with until we learn 
to view their evils as inflicted, not merely for their 
individual sins, but as a heritage from the past, 
and as the ordained form of trial under which not 
only they, but their ancestral dead, are in them be- 
ing u judged according to men in the flesh, ?? that 
they may be brought to " live according to God in 
the spirit." 

Neither the altruistic teaching of Jesus nor His 
words of eternal life can be comprehended until we 
discover how God has locked all humanity, living 
and dead, together, in the struggle toward the goal 
of perfect manhood, and in such a way that the 
higher can press on to the heights of life and bless- 
edness, only as they humble themselves to carry 
with them a burden from the lower, and that the 



218 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

perfection of the individual is inseparably linked 
in with that of the race to which he belongs. 

Verily no man liveth to himself and no man dieth 
to himself. Every act of wrong and unkindness 
by which we tread down a brother pulls us down 
and retards our progress. Every act of love and 
sympathy toward a brother is really done to the 
struggling Christ within him, and so strengthens 
the Christ- nature in ourselves. 

This is the profound teaching of that much mis- 
applied passage in Matt. 25:31-46, which has been 
the bulwark of the Church's doctrine of everlasting 
punishment, and which has not only terrorized her, 
but has been abused by her to hold men in bondage 
to fear, until both she and they have been slow 
learners of the lesson of love which the parable was 
given to inculcate. For "he that feareth is not 
made perfect in love ? ' and ' < perfect love casteth 
out fear. ?? 

We find in these principles also the true doctrine 
of the relation of the Church to the world. They 
teach her that in order to uplift and save the world, 
she must separate herself from the evil of the world. 
Orthodoxy, in its desire to swell the number of the 
saved, has not only resorted to the absurd device 
of sweeping into the number of the elect the whole 
infant portion of the race who are fortunate enough 
to find an early death, no matter how low down in 
the scale of humanity they were born, as well as 
the whole class of idiots and insane, and the de- 
vout heathen ; but it has sought to swell their 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 219 

ranks by diluting the terms of discipleship as pre- 
scribed by Jesus, and by accommodating its dogmas 
and requirements to the worldly mind. 

It has thus succeeded in drawing into the 
net of the Church so many that have only a name to 
live, that it is no longer possible to distinguish by 
their life and conduct the professed followers of 
Christ from other men. There has been so much 
of concession and compromise and confusion, that 
it almost appears as if the world were converting 
the Church rather than being converted by it. All 
this has arisen from the false notion that it is only 
by bringing men into her fold and during this life, 
that they can be saved from an eternal hell ; and 
that the more her borders are enlarged, the greater 
the number of those who will find refuge from the 
coming wrath. 

No one can find warrant in the principles an- 
nounced in this paper for a harsh or unsympathetic 
aspect on the part of the Church toward the world, 
or any plea for a piety that is forbidding • but they 
nevertheless require on the part of Christians a 
pare and self denying life, if they are to have part 
with Christ in the redemption of the world. From 
this new point of view saintship is seen to be no 
easy acquisition, but a most important trust. 

The times demand a fresh assertion of the doc- 
trine of Christ that no man can walk in His way of 
life who is not willing to forsake all that he hath. 
The kind of revival the Church most needs is this 
revival of saintship. She must cease arrogating 



220 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

to herself the place and prerogatives of an official 
barterer in the destinies and souls of men, and give 
up seeking to save from everlasting damnation 
that about them which is not worth saving, which 
was never meant to be saved, and address herself 
to her true calling, as a body divinely associated 
with her Lord in His work of purifying and saving 
humanity, through a self- surrender which is ever 
ready to lay down one's life for the brethren. 

She must abandon the notion that unless she 
somehow draw the world now into her enclos- 
ure, her chance of saving it is gone forever. She 
must learn that in this world and in all worlds the 
Cnrist-life made manifest has power to draw all 
men unto it. So that her calling is always to be 
holy, and men, for their own good as well as hers, 
would far better be kept out of her fold, unless 
they are willing to accept her conditions of saint- 
ship 

Her power to bless them is weakened, if she suffer 
them to ignore or forget the divine idea in her 
election as a chosen seed of blessing to all the 
earth. The very channels through which this 
blessing is to reach the whole body of humanity, 
living and dead, become choked and impure so as 
to be unable to carry the saving current of benign 
redeeming influence. And in respect to her relation 
to all reforms, it is only progress in saintship 
that puts her in the true van of all human 
progress. For in the great organistn of humanity 
there must be redemption at the very fountains of 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 221 

life. And these can be purified alone through the 
lives of Christly men, who act upon and through 
the organism, by being made to it a new and quick- 
ening spirit. 

So that while on the one hand the Church is not 
to detach herself, in a spirit of narrow exclusive- 
ness, from the community of her fellowmen with 
whom she is vitally conjoined, on the other hand 
she must, for their good, preserve the hard and 
fast lines which her Master has drawn between 
good and evil, between righteousness and unright- 
eousness, between truth and error, between light 
and darkness, between God and mammon. 

In order to this we believe it would be great 
gain if the Church were to revive in our day the 
distinctions made in early times, between those who 
were prepared for her mysteries and those who 
received instruction in her outer courts. In the 
great temple of humanity, only the few are yet 
ready for entrance into the most holy place, while 
the many belong still in the outer courts. The 
time indeed approaches when the whole city shall 
be one temple, and the tabernacle of God shall be 
with men ; but we shall only obstruct and delay 
the coming of that time, if we lower the terms upon 
which the God of love receives men into union with 
Himself. 

With consent of the essayist, his editor intro- 
duces a characteristic anecdote of the beloved 
Howard Crosby, late pastor of the Fourth Avenue 



222 LEWIS c. baker's thesis on 

Presbyterian Church, New York. When his 
Presbytery was discussing the revision of the Pres- 
byterian Creed, and one of the committee suggested 
that the portion of the Confession bearing upon 
the divine decrees should be left as it was, and 
that some mellow recognition of God's loving kind- 
ness should be put in at the bottom of the page, 
Dr. Crosby startled the Presbytery with the rmging 
appeal in his clarion voice, u I'll never consent to 
have the love of God smothered into a foot note." 
It was, perhaps, in his devout mind to say : 

Bless the shadows, the kindly shadows, 
And take this thought as thou goest abroad : 

In Heaven and earth 

Shades owe their birth 

To light, and light is the shadow of God ! 

He was doubtless at one with Tennyson in the 
couplet : 

God is Law, say the wise. O soul, then let us rejoice, 
For if He thunder by Law, the thunder is yet His 
voice. 

To the thunder and the whisper of God's voice, 
Dr. Crosby was alike responsive. His theology, if 
we mistake not, its shadows included, was the 
Chalmerian theology of love, making and meaning 
in its broad sweep, as Chalmers himself asserted, 
4 i One thing of all theology,'' God is love. 



THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE FUTURE. 223 

The immanence, omniscience, omnipotence, om- 
nipresence, infinite benevolence of the divine 
personality of the Godhead — God manifested in the 
flesh in the person of Christ — Immanuel God with 
us, Who loved me and gave Himself for me, thereby 
procuring At one-ment — Justified in the Spirit 
— Seen of angels — Eisen from the dead — Preached 
into the nations — Ascended into the Heavens — 
Euling the world from the realm unseen — Now 
present in the Church by the Holy Spirit — To come 
again in the clouds of Heaven and all His saints 
with Him — To raise the dead, both the just and the 
unjust, and to give the kingdom and the greatness 
of the kingdom under the whole Heaven to the 
people of the saints of the Most High. 

This is the broad Scriptural theology and Escha- 
tology of true essential Christianity, now struggling 
for united expression throughout the Church and 
by the Christian ministry. 

The Christian Union, with its clear-cut character- 
istic logic, and intuitive insight of the situation, 
thus concludes a late discussion of " The duty of 
the hour:" There are three possible alterna- 
tives before the Church of to day. First, to 
abandon all attempt at clear theological think- 
ing, and be content with an unintellectual and em- 
pirical religious life. Second, to insist on main- 
taining the theology of the past, and so endeavor 
to confine the life of the present age within the 
limitations of an age far less equipped intellectually 
in every department of thought. Third, to exercise 



224 LEWIS C. BAKER'S THESIS ON 

in the realm of religious science the same intel- 
lectual liberty which is exercised in every other 
scientific realm, and so to bring the religious 
thought of the age into harmony with all true 
thought, that the religious spirit may animate 
every part of life. The mere statement of this 
alternative ought to be sufficient to determine 
which of the three positions the Church and the 
ministry shall accept and adopt. 



APPENDIX. 

From the New York Evangelist of March 2, 1893. 

The Plea for Peace and Work. 

The Plea for Peace and Work, signed by more than 
two hundred of the leading pastors in the Presbyterian 
Church, is one of the most important documents of the 
year. Its significance is measured by the efforts which 
have been made to break its force by misrepresenting 
it as partisan and prejudiced. The most desperate of 
these was the alleged confidential letter which was 
printed in the Mail and Express of Februry the 18th, 
and said to have been sent out with the Plea. When 
this letter was shown to Dr. Van Dyke, through whose 
hands the whole correspondence in regard to this 
matter has passed, he said: " I never saw this before 
it appeared in the Mail and Express, I do not believe 
that it was sent out by any one who was in any way 
authorized to do so. It bears on its face all the marks 
of a fabrication made with the purpose of discrediting 
the movement. No further comment is necessary.'' 

In regard to the Plea, certain facts may be stated 
with authority which are of interest to the public : 

1. Not one of the three men who framed its language 
has ever been in any sense a pupil or partisan of Dr. 
Briggs. On the contrary, all three of them differ from 
him radically in many of his views. 



228 APPENDIX. 

2. None of the professors of the Union, or of any other 
Seminary, were in any way consulted in regard to the 
framing or the publication of the paper. It is essen- 
tially and entirely a pastors' paper. 

3. It was never a secret in any other sense than that 
in which every man's private affairs are secret until he 
chooses to give them to the public. It was never in- 
tended to spring the paper upon the Church just before 
the Assembly. None of the false reports in regard to 
it which have been published have either hastened or 
hindered its publication. It was intended from the 
first to do with it just what has been done : To present 

' an appeal signed by a limited number of representative 
men from all parts of the country against the contin- 
uance of partisan strife and the threatened division of our 
Church upon non-essential and novel tests of orthodoxy. 

Looking at the paper in the light of these real facts 
in regard to it, it is very easy to see how great is its 
weight, and how sure and large its effect must be. 

Among its signers are men such as Dr. Moore of 
Columbus, Dr. Bliss of New York, Drs. Pomeroy and 
Haydn of Cleveland, Dr. Kempshall of Elizabeth, Dr. 
C. E. Robinson of Scranton, Drs. Wood and Fulton of 
Philadelphia, whose very names are a guarantee of 
good faith, conservative principle, and moderate speech. 
Indeed, we might affirm this of the whole list. 

It is noticeable, also, that the signers of the paper are 
representative men. They are the pastors of the largest 
churches in many districts of the country as well as in 
the great cities. 

It would be impossible to find an equal number of 
men on the roll of our Church who would represent so 
many communicants, such a powerful working force 
and such an immense contribution to the boards of our 
Church. 

The moderate tone of the paper will also vastly in- 
crease its influence. It does not plead for anything 



APPENDIX. 229 

which the constitution of our Church does not permit. 
It asks only that points which are non-essential should 
not be made the basis of strife. It proclaims a loyal 
adherence to the confessional doctrine of Holy Scripture 
and insists only that the new dogma of the inerrancy of 
the original manuscripts should not be unlawfully 
appended to the doctrine of the religious infallibility of 
the Bible as it is. This is conservative ground and the 
great mass of our working ministers and elders in the 
Presbyterian Church will certainly be prepared to 
maintain it. 

The Plea has met with the most cordial reception. 
It is so evidently fair and candid that even the mis- 
representations with which it has been assailed have 
not been able to prejudice fair men against it. Among 
the large number of new names which have poured in 
from various parts of country during the last few 
days may be mentioned the pastors of the Presbyterian 
Churches of Sing Sing, -Irvington, Peekskill, Dobbs 
Ferry and Rome, New York; the pastors of the churches 
of Pontiac, Holly, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, Saline, Michi- 
gan ; the pastors of the churches of Logansport and 
Peru, Indiana ; of Vinton in Iowa ; Dr. Wm. F. 
Whitaker, the stated clerk of the Presbytery of Orange, 
and many others of the same type. These men are 
mentioned simply to show that the signatures are not, 
as has been said, confined to the rich churches in a few 
large cities, but are scattered all over the country where 
the strength of Presbyterianism resides. The Rev. 
James H. Taylor, Rome, N. Y., writes: U I believe 
that if opportunity were offered, every minister, save 
one, in the Presbytery of Utica would sign that paper." 
But it is not really necessary to multiply names in sup- 
port of such a position as the Plea represents. The 
strength of the paper is in its spirit, and we are confi- 
dent that in answer to its appeal the vast majority of 
the Presbyterian Church will this spring turn away from 



230 APPENDIX. 

the fruitless paths of controversy into the way of 
peace and work. 

The Plea is as Follows : 

To those who are actively engaged in the ministry of 
Christ, the chief interest and the first duty are the bring- 
ing of the simple gospel home to the hearts and lives of 
men. 

This is the great work of the Church to which every- 
thing else must give way. She can only win the favor 
of God and the love of men by single-hearted devotion 
to the task of preaching and practicing plain Chris- 
tianity. 

As ministers of Jesus Christ, and working pastors in 
the Presbyterian Church, we are filled with the gravest 
fears lest the usefulness of the Church should be 
hindered, her peace disturbed, and her honor dimin- 
ished by the prevalence of theological controversy and 
strife over doctrines which are not essential. 

We remember that there have been two sad periods 
in the history of our Church in which this has happened. 
We remember that our Church has been twice rent 
asunder by issues which have been recognized shortly 
afterwards as unnecessary. We dread the possibility 
of having such a painful experience repeated in our 
own times. We are persuaded that the great body of 
the Church, laymen and ministers, have little sympathy 
with the extremes of dogmatic conflicts and are already 
weary of the strife of tongues, and are longing for 
peace and united work. We feel that we do not speak 
for ourselves alone, but for the great multitude who 
hold the same conviction in regard to the first duty and 
main work of the Church, while representing at the 
same time many different shades of theological opinion. 

It is in this spirit that we join our voices in a plain, 
straightforward, fraternal expression of the desire for 



APPENDIX. 231 

harmony and united devotion to practical work. For 
this reason we deprecate any and every attempt to im- 
pose new tests of orthodoxy, or to restrict the liberty 
hitherto enjoyed by those who sincerely subscribe to 
the essential and necessary articles of the Presbyterian 
Church. Especially would we deplore any hasty addi- 
tion by informal resolution, or by judicial decision, to 
the Confessional statement of the doctrine of Holy 
Scripture. We hold firmly to the teaching of the first 
chapter of "The Confession of Faith," and to the Holy 
Scriptures as the Word of God, the only infallible rule 
of faith and practice. We do not express any individual 
opinion in regard to the theory of the inerrancy of the 
original autographs of Scripture in matters which are 
not essential to religion, but differing as we may in re- 
gard to the abstract truth of that theory, we protest 
unitedly and firmly against making assent to it a test of 
Christian faith or of good standing in the Presbyterian 
ministry. 

In the interests of Christian liberty, in the interests 
of peace and unity, in the interests of missionary en- 
thusiasm and progress, we take this position clearly 
and firmly, and we cordially invite all who agree with 
us to cooperate in maintaining these principles^ believ- 
ing that the end of the commandment is love out of a 
pure heart and a good conscience and a faith unfeigned, 
and that the surest defense of the truth is its unfalter- 
ing proclamation. 

Robert H. Fulton, D. M. Cooper, 

Hughes O. Gibbons, J. F. Somerville, 

Charles Wadsworth, Jr., R. H. Steele, 

William M. Paden, W. T. Jaquess, 

Stephen W, Dana, John Paul Egbert, 

Robert Hunter, Robert A. Carnahan, 

Robert Ellis Thompson, Maurice D. Edwards, 

J. Richelsen, W. M. Blackburn, 

Robert Graham, Ed. S. Wallace, 

J. G. Bolton, James T. H. Waite, 



232 



APPENDIX. 



W. R. Huston, 
W. P. White, 
John B. Reeve, 
Matthew Newkirk, 
H. C. Fox, 
J. L. Scott, 
W. C. Rommel, 
Lewis F. Benson, 
William P. Fulton, 
Frederick W. Johnson, 
W. P. Merrill, 
Perry S. Allen, 
J. C. Thompson, 
Henry E. Thomas, 
N. L. Upham, 
W. H. Weber, 
George P. Wilson, 
R. T. Jones, 
William Sterritt, 
W. H. Gill, 

Edward W. Hitchcock, 
Alexander Henry, 
James D. Hunter, 
Charles E. Robinson, 
Samuel J. Fisher, 
Carlos T. Chester, 
Henry M. Dyckman, 
William K. Preston, 
Henry E. Niles, 
A. L. Benton, 
Richard Montgomery, 
James W. Kirk, 
Charles E. Burns, 
Douglass K. Turner, 
W. A. Patten, 
Philip H. Mowry, 
George R. Moore, 
John F. Sheppard, 
J. H. Boggs, 
Joseph Vance, 
Charles Wood, 
C. P. H. Nason, 
W. O. Campbell, 
Teunis S. Hamlin, 
George O. Little, 
Samuel V. V. Holmes, 
John Newton, 



John Q. Adams, 
R. G. McNiece, 
W. J. Chichester, 
W. R. Richards, 
Paul F. Sutphen, 

D. R. Frazer, 

I. B. Hopwood, 
Lewis Lampman, 
Davis W. Lusk, 
Ford C. Ottman, 
J. Clement French, 
Stanley White, 
Henry M. Storrs, 
James M. Ludlow, 
David O. Irving, 
Everard Kempshall, 
John W. Teal, 
John T. Kerr, 
Eben B. Cobb, 
Chas. E. Herring, 
George H. Payson, 
John A. Liggett, 
John G. Hamner, 
J. G. Mason, 
J. W. MeNulty, 
Samuel Parry, 
A. P. Botsford, 
Edward Dillon, 
Silas E. Persons, 
Charles H. Walker, 

E. A. McMaster, 
Edward P. Sprague, 
Wm. K. Hall, 
Joseph Greenleaf, 
Thomas B. Thomas, 
A. S. Freeman, 
Robert B. Clark, 
Charles Simpson, 
Charles Cuthbert Hall, 
Thomas A. Nelson, 
Newell Woolsey Wells, 
A. V. V. Raymond, 
Walter Q. Scott, 
Chas. E. Dunn, 
James K. Phillips, 
Arthur H. Allen, 
Hector Hall, 



APPENDIX. 



233 



J. William Mcllvain, 
Maltbie D. Babcock, 
S. M. Hamilton, 
John M. Richmond, 
John P. Dawson, 
James M. Walton, 
Charles P. Luce, 
Hanford A. Edson, 
J. Albert Rondthaler, 
M. L. Haines, 
Joseph A. Milburn, 
Wm. E. Moore, 
James A. P. McGaw, 
Samuel G. Anderson, 
Daniel H. Evans, 
Robert J. Thompson, 
N. P. Baily, 
Joseph N. McGiffert, 
Hiram C. Haydn, 
William Knight, 
Charles S. Pomeroy, 
R. A. George, 
Samuel P. Sprecher, 
Peter E. Kipp, 
Dormer L. Hickok, 
James D. Williamson, 
Arthur C. Ludlow, 
Ebenezer Bushnell, 
Matoon M. Curtis, 
Edwards P. Cleaveland, 
Joshua R. Mitchell, 
Henry M. Curtis, 
A. B. Riggs, 
John H. Walker, 
John L. Taylor, 
George M. Maxwell, 
W. A. Major, 
Chas. E. Walker, 
Chas. F. Mussey, 
David A. Heron, 
G. M. McCampbell, 
S. J. McPherson, 
Thomas C. Hall, 
James G. K. McClure, 
John Henry Barrows, 
W. W. Totheroh, 
Thos. D. Wallace, 



Eben Halley, 
Andrew J. Fennel, 
Chas. Townsend, 
Lee W. Beattie, 
W. R. Taylor, 
Nelson Millard, 
Henry H. Stebbins, 
A. J. Hutton, 
Peter Lindsay, 
Geo. B. Spalding, 
L. Mason Clarke, 
John McLachlan, 
Herbert G. Lord, 
A. B. Robinson, 
A. W. Allen, 
L. Van Schoonhoven, 
Nelson B. Chester, 
W. C. McGarvey, 
Thomas Gordon, 
Frank H. Coffran, 
Newton L. Reed, 
Stephen G. Hopkins, 
E. H. Dickinson, 
W. S. Carter, 
N. B. Remick, 
W. W. Weller, 
R. P. H. Vail, 
John T. Wills, 
John E. Bushnell, 
George Alexander, 
Anson P. Atterbury, 
John C. Bliss, 
Henry M. Booth, 
John B. Devins, 
Ira S. Todd, 
Herbert Ford, 
H. L. Grandlienard, 
Charles F. Goss, 
C. W. Goodrich, 
A. W. Halsey, 
James H. Hoadley, 
W. R. Harshaw, 
M. S. Littlefield, 
Daniel E. Lorenz, 
Henry T. McEwen, 
J. Hall Mcllvaine. 
George S. Webster, 



234 APPENDIX. 

Robert W. Patterson, Francis H. Marling, 

John P. Hale, George J. Mingins, 

James Lewis, D. H. Overton, 

Chas. S. Hoyt, Geo. S. Payson, 

Newell D. Hillis, Charles EL Parkhurst, 

Frank O. Ballard, John R. Paxton, 

Henry Neill, Vincent Pisek, 

William Bryant, Stealy B. Rossiter, 

W. N. Page, Wilton Merle Smith. 

Robert J. Service, J. Balcom Shaw, 

E. W. Brown, Geo. L. Spining, 

Richard Turnbull, Charles L. Thompson, 

W. D. Sexton, Henry Van Dyke, 

W. W. Carson, John N. Freeman. 

A Creed that can be Preached. 

The strength of the Tridentine Creed lay in the fact 
that, as Professor Fisher says, it presented a standard 
of truth "in a condensed form, and with direct refer- 
ence to the antagonistic doctrines of the time." The 
peculiarity of the Westminster Confession to-day lies 
in the fact that it lacks the very qualities which made 
the Tridentine Creed strong in its day. It does not 
present truth ''in a condensed form," nor "with direct 
reference to the antagonistic doctrines of the time." 
And in this second respect it fails in an important point. 
For a creed, as Henry B. Smith tells us, is " designed to 
express Scriptural truth in relation to the errors, wants 
and questions of the times." Neither the Tridentine nor 
the Westminster Confession fulfills this test to-day. 
And though the believers in the one creed may be con- 
tented with it, the beb'evers in the other are not satisfied 
with a statement of trath made with reference " to the 
errors, wants and questions of " the seventeenth 
century. 

In this fact lies the strength of the argument for re- 
vision. Times have changed, and we have changed 
with them. Questions which filled the horizon in 1646 
are no longer in sight. New questions, utterly unknown. 



APPENDIX. 235 

in those days, have risen before us. The day of Chris- 
tian missions, of Sunday schools, had not dawned when 
the Westminster divines met. A large part of our or- 
dinary Church work is extra- confessional. The best 
part of our life and work is unrecognized in the creed 
which is still supposed to be the doctrinal basis of our 
Church. 

One of two things should certainly be done, the 
preaching, methods of work, and of activity of our 
Churches should be made to conform to the Confession, 
or the Confession itself should be altered to suit the 
changed condition of affairs. 

Another Way of Peace. 

In every long, hard fight there comes a time when 
both the combatants begin to look about for comprom- 
ises. That hour has come to the Presbyterian Church. 
It is always a dangerous crisis. Weary and sore with 
the conflict, men cry, " Anything is better than this." 
Many a warfare is stopped just at this point, and some 
shameful or ineffectual compromise adopted, when the 
battle should have been fought out to a finish and a 
righteous peace conquered. The controversy in which 
this generation of Presbyterians is engaged does not 
date from recent issues. It is not a Briggs case ; it is 
not a Smith case. It is simply the question, can these 
two classes of minds, conservative and, progressive, 
dwell together peaceably in our Church ? Is our Pres- 
byterian system broad enough or elastic enough to 
accommodate these two classes of men, who are what 
they are, not of set purpose or of malice prepense, but 
of temperament, of blood? Now simply to pray these 
brethren of such diverse constitution to be quiet when 
they get to biting one another, to step in with a com- 
promise whenever there is friction, is simply to buy off 
the quarreling children with sugar plums. It is a poor 



236 APPENDIX. 

hand- to -mouth modus vivendi. Neither party is at rest. 
A chance majority on either side in Presbytery or 
Synod or Assembly rouses the tiger, and either folly or 
out-and-out bad blood is the result. 

The consummation to be wished at this time is not a 
temporary cessation of hostilities, not a declared peace, 
but actual peace on a Constitutional, enduring basis. 
These two classes of minds, the conservative and the 
progressive, must have equal rights and an equally 
assured footing of confidence in the Presbyterian Church. 
A division of our Church at that old line of cleavage 
would be simply an unmitigated disaster. For every 
healthful body of thinkers is composed of those two 
classes of minds : the conservative, to hold fast that 
which is good and moderate the rate of speed, and the 
progressive, to push ahead into new fields. The two 
parties in the Presbyterian Church to-day need each 
other. The Church will not do its best work without 
them. Where would we radicals go to, I would ask, 
unless we were tethered to the weight and respectability 
of orthodoxy ? And, on the other hand, to what depths 
of sodden and hopeless conservatism would orthodoxy 
sink without us radicals to stir it up and ventilate it ? 
The two parties in action and re -action keep our blood 
in healthful circulation and hold us to a moderate and 
safe rate of speed. 

Now the question arises, is our Presbyterian Church 
hroad enough for this full, generous life, or must we 
split into little narrow schools, each so deal and pur- 
blind to every phase of truth except its own that it will 
not stir out of its "peck measure?" I believe the 
Presbyterian Church is broad enough for this larger, 
higher life. To secure that life and hold it against such 
disturbances as the present, it is only necessary to give 
to each party, the conservative and the progressive, Con- 
stitutional recognition, so that neither one can say to 
the other, "I am the body." Just that broad, Consti- 



APPENDIX. 237 

tutionax ground is already in preparation. The General 
Assembly has a committee charged with the duty of 
preparing a ''brief, Scriptural, irenic creed." Let this 
creed embrace all that is essential to " life and godli- 
ness." Then place it side by side with the unrevised 
Confession, a symbol of equal authority. Subscription 
to either symbol shall give a man " good and regular 
standing " in the Presbyterian Church, a standing above 
question, above suspicion. We have, then, broadened 
our Constitutional basis for the equal footing of these 
two parties, whose peaceful co- existence in the Church 
is so essential to a safe and true progress and the highest 
spiritual life. 

It seems an ungracious thing to offer even quasi- 
criticism of so well meant an undertaking as the " Plea 
for Peace." Who does not groan and pray for peace 
with every one of these brethren? Who would not 
sign the good intention even while seeing plainly the 
failure of form? In its last analysis this "Plea for 
Peace " is simply a prayer to the conservative to let the 
progressive have his own way " just for this once." 
You keep still while I do as I please, is not generally a 
very successful plea. I am not at all surprised that the 
conservatives sniff at it mightily. This Plea, if success- 
ful, would secure only a truce and not peace. It would 
" heal the hurt slightly." It would stop the breach 
with " untempered mortar." The very next occasion 
of unpleasantness would find the parties on precisely 
the same footing. The present conditions would be re- 
peated. We have gone too far to accept now any 
makeshift or truce. It would not pay us for all that we 
have endured. No, brethren, " while our hands are in 
it," we might as well keep at it till this whole question 
is permanently, righteously settled. What better work 
can we do for our beloved Church than by a Constitu- 
tional enactment to make this kind of warfare hereafter 
impossible ? 



238 APPENDIX. 

For one, I am determined to hold my place in the 
Church of my birth, not by the courtesy of men who 
have been deterred by a " Plea " from putting me out, 
nor by a truce, nor by a compromise, but by unques- 
tioned right. I was free born. I am just as determined 
that my conservative brother shall hold his place 
undisturbed and by the same right. We need each 
other. Each without the other is but half a man. Our 
mother Church needs us both. Under her wise and 
benign providence each has his place and work. Her 
common ground of essentials is broad enough for both, 
and in the non-essentials of philosophical speculation 
she says calmly to both alike, " My children, the world 
is before you ; only I would advise you not to waste 
much time and strength in that childish and fruitless 
pastime." A Constitutional basis of essentials in a 
"brief, Scriptural, irenic" symbol, placed side by side 
with the Confession, gives to each of us the common 
ground of "peace and work,' J and a large open play- 
ground for flying our speculative kites. — J. H. Ecob, D. D. 



HOW TO MEET INGERSOLL!* 

This is sublimely illustrated in a manner worthy 
of the commanding genius and loyalty to Christ of 
the chief actor, not long before his passing into 
the realm of the blessed in full possession of his 
matchless powers. 

The question in the text, page 59, justifies a note 
that should have been inserted in its proper place; 
but it is not too late : Colonel Ingersoll was at one 
time thrown incidentally into the society of Henry 
Ward Beecher. There were four or five gentlemen 
present, all of whom were prominent in the world 
of brains. A variety of topics was discussed 
with wit and brilliancy, but with no allusion to 
religion, which for the time being was taboo. The 
distinguished infidel present was, of course, too 
polite to introduce the subject himself, but one of 
the party finally, desiring to see a tilt between 
Bob and Beecher, made a playful remark about 
Ingersoll' s idiosyncrasy, as he termed it. 

The Colonel at once opened in defense of his 
views with his usual apt rhetoric. In fact he 
waxed eloquent, as was his wont. He was replied 
to by several gentlemen in very effective repartee. 

*Page 59. 



240 HOW TO MEET INGERSOLL. 

Contrary to the expectations of all, Mr. Beecher 
remained an abstracted listener and said not a 
word. The gentleman who introduced the topic 
with hope that Mr. Beecher would answer Colonel 
Ingersoll, at last remarked : 

"Mr. Beecher, have you nothing to say on this 
question ? ' ' The loyal old hero slowly lifted him 
self from his abstracted attitude and replied : 

" Nothing ; in fact, if you will excuse me -fsoai 
changing the conversation, I will say that while 
you gentlemen were talking, my mind was bent on 
a most deplorable spectacle which I witnessed 
to-day. " 

1 ' What was it ? ' ' at once inquired Colonel 
Ingersoll, who, notwithstanding his peculiar views 
of the hereafter, is noted for his kindness of heart. 

"Why," said Mr. Beecher, u as I was walking 
down town to-day, I saw a poor lame man with 
crutches slowly and carefully picking his way 
through a cesspool of mud, in the endeavor to 
cross the street. He had just reached the middle 
of the filth, when a big burly ruffian, himself all 
bespattered, rushed up to him, jerked the crutches 
from under the unfortunate man's arms, and left 
him sprawling and helpless in the pool of liquid 
dirt, which almost engulfed him." 

" What a brute ! " said the Colonel. " What a 
brute he was ! " they all echoed. 

< ' Yes, ? ? said the old man eloquent, rising from his 
chair and brushing back his long white hair, while 
his eyes glittered with their old-time fire as he 



HOW TO MEET INGERSOLL. 241 

bent them on Ingersoll. " Yes, Colonel Ingersoll, 
and you are the man. The human soul is lame, 
but Christianity gives it crutches to enable it to 
pass the highway of human life. It is your teach- 
ings that knock these crutches from under it and 
leave it a helpless and rudderless wreck in the 
slough of despond. If robbing the human soul of 
its only support on this earth — religion — be your 
profession, why, ply it to your heart's content. It 
takes an architect to erect a building ; a worthless 
incendiary may reduce it to ashes. 77 

The old man eloquent sat down and silence 
brooded over the scene. Colonel Ingersoll found 
he had a master in his own power of illustration 
and said nothing. The company took their hats 
and parted. — Religious Intelligence. 



Correspondencies of Faith" and Views of Madame Guyon. 
By Rev. Henry T. Cheever. 



A. D. F. Randolph, New York. Elliot Stock, London. 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 

An exceedingly suggestive and stimulating book, which challenges 
thoughtful perusal. It is divided into three parts. First, Unmeant Cor- 
respondencies between experimental writers upon religion, presented 
with impressive clearness and with striking illustrations. Second, 
Survey of the experience and writings of Madame Guyon, with an out 
line of her fascinating personal history. Third, The mental discipline 
of holiness by faith. The life and history of Madame Guyon are consid- 
ered in five periods and with remarkable keenness and discrimination. 
The reader will srain a clearer idea of the marvelous power of faith and 
of the bond which it constitutes between all those who love and serve the 
Lord Jesus. If, as the author seems to think, the Church is yet to be 
united upon that one central principle, surely all believers should rejoice. 
— The Interior , Chicago* 

This is a new book and novel, full of the oldest spirit in the world, 
that of faith. It is not a cold discussion, as one might judge from its 
title, but a warm, devotional current of thought, which flows and ripples 
and surges as you follow it. The book has a breath and sweetness of 
love and trustfulness that calms one's heart, and makes it hunger to be 
like Jesus and to be with Him.— Religious Telescope, Ohio. 

A volume most suggestive to the ministry as well as to the laity, 
being the result of much reflection and long experience, showing famil- 
iarity with the men and women of spiritual power in the past and present 
and written in an eminently catholic spirit. It is singularly rich in 
notes on the views and experiences of distinguisV ed living men, embrac- 
ing a wide range of religious thought, and bringing the whole book, of 
300 pages, with much skill and grace into the very times in which we 
live. — Christian Mirror, Portland. 

Mr. Cheever has executed his work with great literary skill and true 
spiritual insight. All who wish to cultivate more of the inner life of 
faith, will derive great help from perusing it. No one can read the book 
without the conviction that Madame Guyon was the most remarkable 
woman that history makes known to us in the Roman Catholic Church. 
Her faith, her conflicts, persecutions, sufferings, her extravagances even, 
enchain the reader's attention. It takes hold of the deepest experiences 
of the soul.— Bibliotheca Sacra. 

The object of the writer is to show that faith is the foundation fact in 
religion, and that the spiritual giants of the world have been they who 
had a deep and abiding faith, which made luminous to them the truths 
of God. The well-known and scholarly author gives in this volume the 
results of his own ripe thinkings and meditations, and conveys to the 
average Christian mind the profounder and more philosophical truths of 
religion. The book is a spiritual tonic for the times and should have a 
wide reading. — Massachusetts Home Journal. 

Tinged and mellowed with mysticism enough to keep it out of the 
class of distinctively theological discussions, but still based on a 
foundation, whose strength and solidity every believer must recognize, 
though he may not be able to provide for it in his philosophy. Mr. 
Cheever is an accomplished author, who brings to his work the deftness 
of hand and rich culture of a practical writer. No thoughtful and ap- 
preciative believer can fail to be interested.— New York Independent. 



MEMORIALS OF THE LIFE AND TRIALS OF A YOUTH- 
FUL CHRISTIAN IN PURSUIT OF HEALTH. 

AS DEVELOPED IN THE BIOGRAPHY OF NATHANIEL CHEEVER, M. D. 

By Rev. Henry T. Cheever. 



This is an affectionate tribute to the memory of a departed brother, 
written in the glowing style of the author's recent productions, but with 
a touching pathos to be found in no other of his published works. The 
brother of whom he writes was Nathaniel Cheever, M. D., a lovely 
Christian character, nearly the whole of whose life on earth was a pn> 
tracted struggle after health, whose mind and spirit were thus tried in 
the furnace of affliction, and came forth like gold from the fire. It is 
full of the most weighty Christian lessons, and no one can peruse it and 
not be struck with the originality of the character illustrated, nor with- 
out laying it aside a wiser and a better man.— Albany Spectator. 

A rare book. It is rare in the peculiar providence which fashioned the 
character it depicts— rare in the sympathizing and discriminating affec- 
tion of the fraternal pens by which it is written — rare in the revelations 
of deep and artless piety which it unfolds— rare in its helpfulness to those 
who are aided to follow Christ by the sight of the toilings of others of 
like infirmities toward the heavenly hills. We put it on our shelves by 
the side of the Life of Mary Van Lennep, as another round in the ladder 
by which we are daily striving to climb upward .—Boston Congregational- 
ist. 

This book will do good in a great many ways, and for many reasons. 
It presents one of the finest and most beautiful illustrations of the strong 
ties of a New England home. The record, moreover, is true. There is 
not a stroke of the painter's brush about it. Only the near connection 
of the writer to the subject of his memoir, and to the parties exhibited, 
has led him to keep back more than he has told, of that affection and 
kindness which burned so brightly and constantly around the youthful 
hero; for he was one in the highest and best sense. There was great 
manliness and great simplicity in his character. The writer has often 
listened with astonishment to his comprehensive and catholic opinions 
of men and things abroad in the world, though he himself was a caged 
bird. Every young man should read this book, and learn that persever- 
ance is the grand secret of success in life. 

Every Christian should read and study this Life in the furnace of 
affliction. It is a new, fresh and strengthening commentary upon all the 
passages of Scripture which speak of the afflictions and the consolations 
of the people of God. The whole narrative is a vivid exhibition of those 
paradoxes— "Troubled on every side, yet not distressed ; perplexed, but 
not in despair ; cast down, but not destroyed ; always bearing about in 
the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be 
made manifest in our body."— Purit an Recorder. 



THE WHALE AND HIS CAPTORS. 

By Rev. Henry T. Cheever. 



Harper Brothers, New York. Sampson Lowe, London. 



This elegantly printed and embellished volume is the production of a 
close observer, and a polished and able writer. The "Whale's biography, 
and a thousand incidents of whaling life, are racily and agreeably told, 
while the reflections of the moralist and Christian voyager are unob- 
trusively thrown into the text. An appendix contains many valuable 
suggestions in regard to the moral and religious interests of seamen and 
whalemen. We know of few books which will be more eagerly sought 
after in district libraries than this.— Watertown Reformer. 

There is very much valuable information contained in a small compass 
—in fact, a complete history of that department of the Whale Fishery. 
Interspersed are glowing and graphic pictures of the ocean, its dangers, 
its storms, its calms, and the peculiar habits of those that roam its 
depths.— Albany Atlas. 

Since the issue of Dana's justly celebrated "Two Years Before the 
Mast, 1 ' we have read nothing of sea life and adventure so fresh, lively 
and instructive as this beautiful book. It is full of life, anecdote, facts, 
incidents and character, and succeeds in keeping the reader intensely 
occupied with the glories and wonders of the deep to the end. The con- 
templative eye and Christian heart with which the writer looks abroad 
upon the deep, and the fertile fancy with which he links the incidents 
and even the phraseology of sea life with the most important and beau- 
tiful matters of religion and truth, are among the peculiar charms of the 
book. It is printed uniform with the Abbotts 1 beautiful series of histories, 
and is well adapted for the reading of the young.— New York Evangelist. 

A charming volume, presenting the rarely combined features of being 
a book adapted alike to delight boys and men ; one which the naturalist 
will peruse for fresh information on the habits of Cetacea, and the clergy- 
man recommend on account of the spirit of cheerful piety and truthful- 
ness that pervades the narrative. — London Literary Gazette. 

Avery readable and interesting volume, fuU of stirring adventure* 
hair-breadth escapes, and curious information. It is just the sort of book 
for the.eager intelligences which at this season of the year crowd around 
the Christmas table. — London Athenceum. 

The author narrates the exciting events Of a sea- voyage undertaken 
for his health, and the fisher of men is lost sight of in the description of 
the life and manners of the fishers of fish. Strange to say, he has con- 
verted what Homer so frequently calls the "untillable ocean," into a 
field prolific at once of romantic adventure, rich information, moral 
instruction, and most absorbing interest. The reader is borne away 
through his pages with an attraction that reminds one of the boat drawni 
by the harpooned monster of the deep in his abortive efforts to escape 
his pursuers. We know of no reading of the kind which will afford a 
richer treat than this beautiful volume of Mr. Cheever's.— New Church 
Repository. 



THE ISI,ANI> WOKLD OF THE PACIFIC. 

By Rev, Henry T. Cheever. 
With Engravings, 12mo, Muslin, $1.00. 



Harper Brothers. 

This is a volume worthy of the age, and of the present wants of the 
world. We have perused it with unmingled pleasure and delight, and 
promise any one who will take the trouble to open it, an amount and 
richness of information relative to the Polynesian world, to be obtained 
from no other source. It is copiously illustrated and written in a flowing 
style, and with the marks of keen observation, Christian philosophy, 
and a critical insight into the world's woes, wants and blessings, stamped 
on every page. In it are passages and chapters of exceeding beauty of 
description. The chapter on the Albatross, that glorious bird of the sea, 
is worth the price of the volume.— American Spectator. 

The volume presents a mass of information with regard to the history, 
geography, and commercial and political condition of trios- e islands, 
brought down to the present time, and digested into a compact and read- 
able form. His book cannot fail to be widely read during the present 
excitement in regard to everything connected with the Pacific Ocean. — 
New York Tribune. 

The Christian public will welcome a volume from one who is able and 
willing to tell the truth in regard to those islands where missionary 
operations have been so successful, and yet the subject of so much 
detraction and abuse. The book contains much valuable information, 
connected with interesting anecdotes and personal adventures. It is 
illustrated by a score of well-executed engravings. The Appendix, 
giving a statistical view of the resources, trade, population, etc., of the 
Hawaiian Islands, is a valuable addition.— New York Observer. 

It is full of information and life, telling stories of land and sea in a 
way to stir the passion for adventure without harm to the sobriety of 
the reader's temper, or the steadfastness of his faith. We need such 
books always, and especially now, when a new age of marine adventure 
is awakened, and our youth are taking with fresh zeal to the seas. 
Voyages are always captivating to the young, and happy is it when the 
story is told by a Christian or a man of taste. The book is just the 
thing for the host of boys between fourteen and twenty, the mighty 
generation now starting on the voyage of lite.— Christian Enquirer. 

A charming book, which we can read with confidence in the author's 
statements, and with unflagging interest in the fresh scenes which they 
bring so vividly before our minds. It is a most instructive book for 
young persons. The ocean paradises of which it makes report to us, 
will ere long be visited by summer tourists.— Unitarian Quarterly Ex- 
aminer. 

Melville threw around his incidents of Polynesian adventure the soft, 
light and bright hues of fairy creation, reducing his story in the minds 
of many to a pure myth. Cheever dresses his personal adventure in the 
soberer garb of truth ; and as he leads us on from group to group of those 
far-off isles, he drops here and there, all along the course of his route, 
practical and statistical observations, that let one deeply into the true 
state of these " haunts and homes " of another, though a brother race.— 
Rochester American. 

Those interested in the history of missions, as conducted in the islands 
of the sea, will wish to place this interesting and instructive volume both 
in their home and school libraries. Its style is pleasing, and as well cal- 
culated to engage the attention of the young as the fascinating romance, 
while, instead of presenting merely the ideal, it communicates the real 
and the useful. The numerous engravings add to its value, and give an 
accurate view of many points of interest in these far-off islands.— J-duo- 
cate and Guardian. 



LIFJE IN THE SANDWICH INLANDS : 
The Heart of the Pacific, as it Was and Is. 

By Rev. Hejjry T. Cheever. 

Author of " The Island World of the Pacific," " The Whale and his Cap- 
tors, 11 etc. With engravings, 1 vol. 12mo, 355 pages. 



An agreeable addition to Rev. Mr. Cheever' s former works on the 
Pacific, written in a kindly tone to Christian and heathen, with an allow- 
ance, not always made in books of this class, for the doubts and prejudices 
of the latter, as well as the labors and teachings of the former. The 
Sandwich Islands offer, in various ways, many points of interest ; in the 
romantic and tragic interest attached to their discovery; the generally 
amiable character of their inhabitants; their rapid advance in civilization 
under the influence of American missionaries, who have, in this field, met 
with a success in extent and rapidity unequaled since the time of the early 
Jesuit Fathers; their important commercial position, and the beauties 
and peculiarities of their natural characteristics. Information, full and 
interesting, is given on all these points in the present volume, and it will 
be found an agreeable and sensible work, with an Appendix containing 
valuable commercial statistics. — Literary World. 

There are but few readers, however well read, whose knowledge of the 
interior of the Sandwich Islands may not be greatly increased by this 
work. With its pleasantly told narrative of experience and adventure, 
it presents so many characteristic facts, anecdotes and illustrations of 
native life and missionary labor as to afford vivid pictures of things as 
they really are. The history of the missionary effort is admirably and 
justly told. It is illustrated by a variety of well-engraved views, and is 
written in a pleasing, lively style, the value of which is much enhanced 
by its unaffected religious spirit. — New York Evangelist. 

In the volume before us Mr. Cheever has invested the rise and progress 
of these people from heathenism with the charms of romance, and 
presents the reader with a diormic picture of varied beauty. It gives a 
most interesting sketch of a people who he supposes will, ere long, in the 
ordinary course of events, become one of the States of our own confed- 
eracy, and furnishes in an Appendix of some fifty pages a statistical 
view of the resources, trade, population, etc. It will be read with pleas- 
ure by young and old.— Parker's Journal. 

We never tire of reading accounts of the Pacific Islands. The fertility 
of their soil, the beauty of their climate, and the romantic interest which 
attaches to the population, and the prospects which are opening to them 
in the advancement of civilization, -all attract readers to every well-writ- 
ten account of their condition. Mr. Cheever has already distinguished 
himself by several works upon kindred subjects, and has shown an inti- 
mate acquaintance with the Pacific. This present volume is a work of 
rare value. — Providence Journal. 

Who would have conjectured, half a century ago, that such a book as 
this could have been written — a book describing a nation reclaimed from 
the dominion of paganism, and brought in so high a degree under the 
enlightening and purifying influence of Christianity ! Mr. Cheever, in 
comparing the past wich the present, and thus recording some of the 
most signal triumphs of the gospel in modern times, has rendered good 
service to the cause of missions, while he has communicate I much val- 
uable information concerning the manners and usages of the people of 
whom he writes. The book seems to have been designed specially for 
seamen, but we mistake if it has not quite as important a mission to 
perform on the land as on the water.— Puritan Recorder. 

As a picture of the Sandwich Islands of the present d^y, we have 
nothing more complete than this volume. It is written with a spirited 
and fanciful pen, and contains much that is truthful and life-like, delin- 
eated in such an exceedingly agreeable vein of narrative, that the work 
will impart entertainment to all readers.— HunVs Merchant Magazine. 



THE PULPIT AND THE PEW. 

From the Leaves of a Pastor's Journal. 

Henry T. Cheever, D. D. 



OPINIONS OP THE PRESS. 

This is a genuine, living, veritable, powerful record. It is a deeply in- 
teresting and instructive book. It is a terrible revelation of Satan in a 
Christian Church, and of the terribleness of the struggle through which 
a faithful pastor and his faithful few will sometimes have to pass in the 
work of exorcising him. A more remarkable record of a conflict for 
Christ and justice against Satan and oppression, for piety and freedom 
against iniquity and slavery, so brief, concentrated and triumphant is 
hardly to be found in the English language. We commend this book to 
the pe rusal of every Church and pastor throughout our land. It will 
teach them what are their rights, and how in Christ to defend them. 
We commend it to every oppressed and injured pastor and Church mem- 
ber. We commend it to all the deacons of Churches of every denomina- 
tion. — New York Independent. 

The pastoral office in our country is often the mere foot-ball of society 
to be kicked to and fro at the dictation of aspiring captious spirits. The 
book before us gives the actual experiences which arise from this peculiar 
state of the pastoral office, in a cogent style, and with the results of a 
wide range of reading and observation, to make it on many accounts a 
work of wisdom and truth. It is a work of great ability, and well de- 
serving the attention of both pastors and people.— New York Chronicle, 

The author is evidently a very conscientious and hiarh-toned man, 
whose lot'was cast in the midst of a kind of Christian Philistines that 
made his situation sufficiently uncomfortable. He fought a good fight 
for the Church and the pulpit, and gained the victory. 

We are glad he put down the Christian Philistines. That sect is 
ensconced, more or less, in every parish, and well done he who gives them 
a rebuff. — New York Christian Inquirer. 

In style, the book has a peculiar force, directness, point and power, 
and sparkles with gems of thought that electrify and charm the reader! 
It is valuable, also, for its singularly felicitous and appropriate quota- 
tions, which make it a kind of picture-gallery, hung around with the 
chefs d'ceuvre of this and other ages. 

The writer is evidently a man of extensive and varied research, with a 

Erompt, discriminating and vigorous mind, deeply read in the springs of 
uman action, profoundly conscious of the power of truth, and one who 
would dare to do right, whatever antagonism such action might awaken. 
— Norwich, Connecticut, Courier. 

We have read this volume of 365 pages, with deep interest. It is 
written in a terse and attractive style, and much valuable information 
may be derived from it, for the benefit of both pastor and people. It 
contains many striking and forcible quotations from the learned and the 
good of the past and the present times. It is worthy of wide circulation. 
— Hartford, Connecticut, Religious Herald. 

Are you fond of tableaux ? Then you must read this book, for here 
are " tableaux vivants " in which the living play a singular part, and the 
other world strangely mingles. This is a collection of leaves from a 
pastor's journal, of " facts stranger than fiction. 1 ' The conflict is be- 
tween principle and prejudice ; love to God and man, and selfishness ; 
freedom and slavery, Heaven-descended justice and border ruffian out- 
rage in the Church. Thousands will read it as if a history of their own 
experience. The book has the three-fold merit of being truthful, useful 
and interesting.— New York American Baptist. 





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